The snow storms, which started on Thursday, are now sweeping the entire country with freezing snow and icy rain, and not even Texas, which enjoyed 80 degree weather just earlier this week, is being left out.
Sleet and rain caused highways to become increasingly dangerous and slippery in a storm that's expected to hit much of the United States throughout the weekend, the Associated Press reported.
By Thursday night and early Friday morning, a quarter-million Americans were left without electricity and schools cancelled classes, according to the AP.
In Dallas, where Super Bowl week was ruined two years ago due to a similar unforeseen storm that left travelers stuck on unmoving highways, residents and stores closed a day early expecting at least a half-inch of freezing rain, the AP reported. Texas is expected to endure temperatures below freezing all weekend long.
A store manager at a Home Depot in Dallas, James McGilberry, said the stores ran out of firewood and ice melt a day before the storms even hit.
"It's almost like a Black Friday," McGilberry told the AP, "but I guess we'll call it an Ice Friday."
The AP reported that various road crews and dump truckers were already dumping sands on highways, and more than 1,000 flights were cancelled in and out of the Dallas area by Friday morning. The North Texas Tollway Authority has 79 trucks ready to cover 850 miles of highways with sand.
The death of a truck driver who slid off the road on a Dallas highway has been confirmed, and three other traffic deaths in Oklahoma and Indiana were caused by the dangerous weather conditions, the AP reported.
Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Tennessee were issued server winter storm and ice warnings by the National Weather Service on Friday, the AP reported.
Minnesota and Wisconsin are seeing up to two feet of snow and the temperature in North Dakota is nearly 40 below with the wind chill, according to the AP.
