A powerful winter storm that brought blizzard warnings Friday across the Upper Midwest was responsible for at least three fatal crashes while flash flooding from rains in the South swept away cars and caused dozens of water rescues.
In northern New England, a mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain combined to make for dangerous driving Friday for post-holiday travelers. Up to 4 inches of snow was possible in the western mountains of Maine.
Much of the Dakotas and part of Minnesota faced a blizzard warning after many areas got a foot of snow or more Thursday.
An accident between a small bus and an SUV in Minnesota killed a 47-year-old woman on the bus and injured nine others Thursday. A second person died in central Minnesota after being struck on a road by a pickup with a plow blade.
In North Dakota, a pickup truck driver was killed Thursday on a snow-covered highway when visibility was impaired by blowing snow from a plow, according to the state highway patrol.
Another storm dumped up to 12 inches of rain in Louisiana and Mississippi, sweeping away cars and forcing some residents to be rescued from their homes before the rains moved into Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and western North Carolina on Friday.
The National Weather Service posted flash flood watches and warnings for much of the South from Louisiana into southwest Virginia.
“We had an extreme flash flooding event,” said Glen Moore, the emergency management director in Forrest County, in southwestern Mississippi, which saw 9 inches fall over 12 hours through early Friday.
Authorities had to rescue residents from about 25 area homes in Forrest County, Moore said.
They rescued one man whose car was swept away after he went around a barricade on a flooded road, Moore said.
“He was able to make it outside of the car and latch onto a tree until we could get a boat to him,” Moore said.
There was one death in Tennessee where a woman fell into a rain rain-swollen creek near Chattanooga. Authorities who recovered the woman’s body Friday morning about three hours after she lost her footing said she had been camping in a cave with friends and they were trying to leave the area when she fell into the water.
