Snowy roads lead to hundreds of Virginia and North Carolina crashes as Arctic air brings record cold

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Snowy roads led to hundreds of crashes throughout Virginia and North Carolina, including a series of crashes on an interstate highway involving more than 50 vehicles, as officials continued to ask people Thursday to avoid travel to allow crews to work on the roads.

Two separate collisions stopped traffic on Interstate 40 in Orange County, North Carolina, on Wednesday afternoon and the stopped vehicles were struck from behind, including a tractor trailer that hit a passenger vehicle, causing a fatality, according to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. A total of 53 vehicles were involved in 12 crashes in the area, the highway patrol said. The driver of the tractor trailer was charged with misdemeanor death by motor vehicle and exceeding a safe speed for conditions.

The highway patrol responded to nearly 1,200 collisions statewide on Wednesday, according to Sgt. Christopher Knox. Crashes on Wednesday also closed portions of Interstate 95 and I-85 near Raleigh, North Carolina.

Virginia State Police reported early Thursday that there had been nearly 500 crashes statewide since the storm began, including at least 45 involving injuries. There had been no fatal crashes.

Emergency workers in Suffolk, Virginia, rescued two people from an SUV that crashed into water on Wednesday afternoon, according to the city’s Department of Fire & Rescue. Photos the department posted on social media showed rescuers stretching a ladder to the vehicle’s roof and helping one person clinging to the roof rails crawl across the ladder to land.

About 7,500 electric customers in North Carolina were without power Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, with most in east-central counties where freezing rain and ice accumulation had been forecast. About 1,800 flights were canceled or delayed on Thursday across the U.S., including about 250 flights in and out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware.com.

After the significant snowfall across Virginia on Wednesday, forecasters expected lingering snow showers to bring another half inch of snow on Thursday. The National Weather Service received reports of about 12.5 inches (31.8 centimeters) of snow in the Greenbrier area south of Norfolk and about 4 inches (10 centimeters) in the Richmond area, according to Nancy Moll, a meteorologist with the weather service’s office in Wakefield, Virginia.

An Arctic air mass was bringing widespread, record-breaking cold to the central United States, and forecasters expected some locations in the Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley to experience their coldest temperatures on record this late in the season, according to the Weather Prediction Center. In Detroit, crews are fixing a large water main break that left dozens of people without power and heat amid temperatures well below freezing.

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Associated Press writer Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.