High winds short out high voltage power lines in Lawton, Okla., where the threat of severe weather remains throughout the day. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News
A vast storm system pounded the Dakotas with snow, coated Oklahoma with rare spring ice and took aim at parts of the Mid-Atlantic and South, where forecasters warned of hail and perhaps tornadoes later Wednesday.
Snow, freezing rain and strong wind snapped trees, broke power poles and left cars sheathed in ice in South Dakota, and the city of Sioux Falls declared a state of emergency.
Forecasters said parts of that state could get 2 feet of snow before the storm moves out later Wednesday and heads for Minnesota, which was expecting as much as a foot through early Thursday.
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Farther south ? and much more unusually ? ice coated roads in Oklahoma, all the way down to the Red River border with Texas.
Dirk Lammers / AP
Icy branches partially block a city street and fall amid parked cars in Sioux Falls, S.D.
?For April, that is really amazing,? said Tom Niziol, a meteorologist and winter weather expert for The Weather Channel.
It all made for a messy day of travel in the Great Plains and the Midwest. Chicago O?Hare, a hub airport for the central United States, reported almost 500 flight cancellations.
As the storm system lumbers eastward, powerful thunderstorms are expected later Wednesday and overnight in Pennsylvania and Maryland, including Philadelphia and its suburbs.
It has been unusually cold this week in the West and unseasonably warm in the East, including temperatures pushing 90 degrees Wednesday in Washington. That warm air makes the weather system more dangerous.
?There will be more than enough fuel for these storms,? said Carl Parker, another meteorologist for The Weather Channel.
A line of late-day storms was expected to sweep across Arkansas on Wednesday afternoon, threatening to dump damaging hail and perhaps spawn tornadoes before pushing out of the state in the evening.
The same storm system has already produced bizarre weather elsewhere in the country.
Earlier this week, the temperature fell 55 degrees in Denver in less than 24 hours. Gusty wind nudged 21 cars of a freight train off the tracks in Nebraska. And snowflakes the size of cotton balls fall in Marshall, Minn., NBC affiliate KARE in Minneapolis reported.
This story was originally published on Wed Apr 10, 2013 6:32 AM EDT
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