Baton Rouge, Louisiana >> Due to unusually cold and slippery road conditions, Deep South officials said a winter storm closed the road, causing dozens of road accidents and killing a fatal Louisiana man. I urged people to stay home today because they robbed me of. I slipped on the ice.
The winter storm that caused an emergency in Texas, bringing snow, ice and plunging temperatures to the southern plains, extended its frigid fingers to the Gulf Coast. According to the National Weather Service, winter storm warnings have covered much of Louisiana and Mississippi and have spread to parts of Alabama, with forecasters warning of possible storms in the northwest corner of the state.
Cold temperatures were expected to drop to teens, with some places expected to be in the single digits from overnight to Tuesday morning, and even colder when the winds cooled.
According to officials, the Louisiana Department of Health announced the first storm-related death in the state on Monday night after a 50-year-old Lafayette parishioner slipped on ice and hit his head against the ground. The victim was not immediately identified.
At a press conference tonight, Governor John Bel Edwards called death “very tragic,” and state police also tackled more than 150 road accidents, dangerous with a mixture of snow, sleet, and glaze. He said he was moderately to seriously injured because he created a sleet situation.
Interstate 10 was closed between Baton Rouge and Lafayette on Monday morning after multiple shipwrecks, including a stack of 14 vehicles, The Advocate reported. In that case, one car hit a guardrail, creating a “domino effect,” and the other cars slipped into each other because they didn’t stop on the ice, but no one was injured, state police said.
State police spokesman Taylor Skranz told the newspaper that soldiers had to deal with some drivers trying to avoid barricades to get on the interstate highway.
Edwards added that more than 125,000 blackouts have been reported throughout Louisiana, with more than 12 hours of power outages in some areas. He said state agencies delivered generators to some of the affected areas.
Many schools, businesses, and state-wide offices were scheduled to close on Tuesday to commemorate the reduced Mardigra holiday during the pandemic, but the governor told Louisiana residents “at home, off the road.” Please stay away and do not go out. ” It is absolutely necessary. “
“This is a very serious emergency and you will see the winter weather coming again,” Edwards said. “We don’t know exactly when the thawing will take place, and roads can change from unsafe to safe and then dangerous again, so everyone needs to be careful about that. “
The smooth condition also bothered Mississippi. In Mississippi, the state’s Department of Transport reported ice on most roads and bridges in the state. The agency posted photos and videos of the snow-covered interstate highway on Facebook, urging people to stay home so that the crew could work to clear the road.
In northern Alabama, authorities said earlier today that at least 20 cars were caught in a pile along the highway near Lacy’s Spring, where thick fog and ice cover the road, according to the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office. corresponding to. No serious injuries have been reported, officials said.
In Georgia, where the National Weather Service predicted that precipitation and nighttime temperatures would drop throughout the northern part of the state in the 20s, Governor Brian Kemp delayed the opening of all state offices by two hours on Tuesday morning. He said the decision was made after consulting with Georgia’s Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, urging school officials to closely monitor the situation in the area.