A powerful storm system spawned rare December tornadoes in the South, dropped crippling ice and snow in the Midwest and brought unseasonably warm temperatures from the mid-Atlantic to New York City. Meteorologist Mike Seidel reports.
By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor
Thousands of people faced the prospect of spending the holidays in the dark, after a huge ice storm knocked out power throughout the Midwest and New England.
More than 150,000 homes and businesses in Michigan, upstate New York and northern New England remained without electricity Monday morning after thick ice felled trees and brought down power lines, according to utilities companies.
Brad Hoving, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids, Mich. -- the worst-affected state -- said many people may still be using candlelight until Thursday.
"It's a big deal," Hoving told the AP. "It's Christmas and we've just had a major ice storm."
Stephanie Burnham, in Clarkston, Mich., was one of the luckier people who had their power restored.
"We had just finished making dinner and...we cleaned everything up. Then our power went out, so we got all our candles and set up our generator," she told ClickOnDetroit.com.
"They told us it wouldn't be back until Christmas so we were like, 'Oh no all of our food!' But they did a great job."
The storm also saw some 1,200 U.S. flights canceled over the weekend and delayed another 15,000, according to the aviation-tracking website FlightAware.
At least 14 deaths across the U.S. and Canada were blamed on the storm, the AP reported. Nine of these fatalities came in the U.S., including five people killed in Kentucky and a woman in Arkansas following a 130-mph tornado.
Heavy snowfall buried parts of the northern Midwest, with the heaviest covering coming in Milwaukee, which saw nine inches.
Elsewhere, New York City and Philadelphia saw record high temperatures, with shoppers taking to the streets in shirtsleeves.
Kevin Roth, lead meteorologist at The Weather Channel, said on Monday the worst of the storm was over, save for “one last gasp” to trouble commuters in the Northeast trying to see their friends and families before Christmas.
"It will be a rough start to the week getting to grandma’s house," Roth told NBC News. "For anyone thinking of taking to the roads in the Northeast, based on the forecasts it would be better to leave it until Tuesday, when the weather is set to be a lot quieter."
He said travel problems on Monday would be caused by a small amount of snowfall in northern Maine, around Caribou, as well as rain moving up from West Virginia to New England through the morning.
Massachusetts is still below freezing so could expect some freezing rain throughout the day.
Other than that, Roth said, the weather would be quiet across the whole of the U.S. from Tuesday through the week.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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This story was originally published on Mon Dec 23, 2013 5:15 AM EST
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