About 45,000 people in Arkansas were still without power Monday after an ice storm more than a week ago brought down power lines, emergency services officials said.
Lack of power had prevented some cities from properly treating their drinking water supplies and users had been ordered to boil all drinking water.
The continuing cold weather was blamed for the death on Monday of a 79-year-old man who lost control of his car on an icy road near Little Rock and crashed.
The heartland received a second slap as a rare New Year’s snowstorm blanketed the already icy region and then swept into the South.
Hardest hit was Oklahoma, which got up to 8 inches of snow even as the state was recovering from the Christmas Day storm that paralyzed a 900-mile swath from New Mexico to Arkansas.
Officials attributed at least 53 deaths to the two storms and said about 95,000 customers in the region were without electricity from the original icy blast.
More than 20,000 utility workers from 25 states labored in the cold to repair thousands of miles of power lines in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas that were snapped mostly by icy tree limbs, they said.
The Southern snows paled in comparison to those that struck the Northeast over the weekend, where up to 2 feet of snow closed airports and forced a snow emergency in Philadelphia, but it was enough to slow the efforts to steady the reeling region, officials said.
They said some areas may not get electricity until the weekend.
On Monday afternoon, the sun came out in Arkansas. “If we can just keep the sunshine going for a week or so, we’ll be well on our way to recovery,” said Jennifer Gordon, spokeswoman for the Arkansas emergency management department.
The New Year’s storm traveled across the South, dumping rare snows in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama before petering out in Georgia on Monday. The northern Louisiana city of Shreveport got 4 inches, its heaviest snowfall in 15 years, officials said.
In north Texas, Dallas and Ft. Worth got enough snow to cause a combined 700 traffic accidents, police said.
Savannah, Ga., was chilled to a record low for the date of just 19 degrees early Monday, the National Weather Service said.
In Mississippi, where up to 3 inches of snow fell on Monday, icy roadways were blamed for the deaths of a Tennessee couple on Interstate Highway 55. More than 100 accidents were reported in Mississippi.
Florida fruit and vegetable growers braced for another night of freezing temperatures Monday, spraying their fields with water to protect tender plants from the cold.
Most of the state’s citrus was expected to survive.
