PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Check your flight status if you're heading to the airport today. More than 75 flights out of Philadelphia International Airport are canceled on Friday.
There are almost 3,000 cancelled flights across the country, on top of thousands more canceled on Wednesday and Thursday, mostly because of the major winter storm that's wreaking havoc from Texas to Maine.
Parts of New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont reported a foot or more of snow on Friday morning, according to the National Weather Service, a day after ice snapped tree limbs and power lines in Memphis, knocking out electricity to nearly 125,000 homes and businesses.
The storm knocked out power to more than a quarter of a million people across the country.
CBS News Meteorologist David Parkinson said Friday that some areas in the storm's path are facing a frigid Friday.
“As you go through the morning, we have incredibly cold temperatures across the south — record cold, in fact, in parts of Texas, where you have Dallas in the mid-teens for their morning low,” Parkinson said. “Same goes for Austin, and even as you go up into Oklahoma, you've got lows in the single digits.”
However, it was the ice that threatened to wreak havoc on travel and electricity service in the Northeast before the storm heads out to sea late Friday and Saturday, said Rick Otto, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.
"Snow is a lot easier to plow than ice," he said.
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About 350,000 homes and businesses lost power in an area stretching from Texas to Ohio on Thursday as freezing rain and snow brought down branches and encased power lines. The storm also caused a deadly tornado in Alabama, dumped more than a foot of snow in parts of the Midwest and brought a measurable snowfall to Texas, which is rare.
On Friday morning, the power outages were concentrated in Tennessee, Ohio, New York, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, according to the website poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.
Many schools and businesses remained closed Friday in areas hit by the frigid weather on Thursday because roads remained icy and temperatures hadn't risen above freezing.
The Ohio Valley was especially affected Thursday, with 211 flight cancellations at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport on Thursday. Nearly all Thursday afternoon and evening flights were canceled at the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. UPS suspended some operations Thursday at its Worldport hub at the airport, a rare move.
Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed Friday at LaGuardia Airport in New York, Boston's Logan Airport and Newark Liberty Airport.
In the Pittsburgh area, commuter rail service was halted Friday when a power line went down, trapping cars at a Port Authority of Allegheny County rail yard.
"With temperatures not expected to rise much throughout the day, quick repairs and restoration of the rail system will be difficult but our crews are out there trying as hard as they can," the port authority tweeted.
The storm came on the heels of a nor'easter last weekend that brought blizzard conditions to many parts of the East Coast.
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