CHICAGO — A winter weather colossus roared into the nation’s heartland Tuesday, laying down a paralyzing punch of dangerous ice and whiteout snow that served notice from Texas to Maine that the storm billed as the worst in decades was living up to the hype so far.
Ice-covered streets were deserted in Super Bowl host city Dallas. Whiteouts shut down Oklahoma City and Tulsa. And more was on the way. Chicago expected 2 feet of snow, Indianapolis an inch of ice, and the Northeast still more ice and snow in what’s shaping up to be a record winter for the region.
The National Weather Service on Tuesday issued a winter storm warning for most of Maine, effective from Wednesday morning to early Thursday. The heaviest snowfall was expected to occur in most areas starting Wednesday afternoon, continuing into the night, with around 10 to 15 inches expected with the possibility of more along the coast. Northern Aroostook County was not under a storm warning Tuesday evening but was expected to receive up to 3 inches.
Federal courts in Bangor and Portland, along with all state courts except for those in Aroostook County, will be closed Wednesday.
The system that stretched more than 2,000 miles across a third of the country promised to leave in its aftermath a chilly cloak of teeth-chattering cold, with temperatures in the single digits or lower.
Winds topped 60 mph in Texas. The newspaper in Tulsa, Okla., canceled its print edition for the first time in more than a century. And in Chicago, both major airports gave up on flying until at least Wednesday afternoon.
The threat of high winds also had Chicago officials contemplating steps they haven’t taken in years — starting with closing down the city’s busy and iconic Lake Shore Drive because of the prospect of 25-foot waves caused by 60 mph winds washing over it from nearby Lake Michigan.
Everyone “should brace for a storm that will be remembered for a long time,” said Jose Santiago, executive director of the city’s office of emergency management.
The worst of the storm was expected later Tuesday evening in the Midwest, but many cities began shutting down hours ahead of the snow. Scores of schools, colleges and government offices canceled activities or decided not to open at all.
Large sections of busy Midwest interstates were closed, and nearly 6,000 flights had been canceled across the nation.
Early accounts indicated many people already planned to heed advice to stay home.
“It’s going to be a ghost town,” Chicago-area commuter Martin Berg said after arriving at a downtown train station.
In Missouri, more than a foot of snow had fallen by midday Tuesday, with no end in sight.
“The roads are just pure white. There’s no traffic. Nothing,” said Kristi Strait, who was working at Clinton Dis-count Building Materials in Clinton, Mo.
In state capitols across the Midwest and East, lawmakers cut short their workweek because of the storm. Normally bustling downtown streets were quiet, too. And many stores were closed, with signs on the windows blaming the weather.
Meteorologist Jeff Johnson of the National Weather Service in Des Moines said the storm was sure to “cripple transportation for a couple of days.” The snow and the wind were a dangerous combination, even in areas where not that much snow was expected.
“You don’t want to get caught out in the rural areas in your vehicle in this storm. It’s a good night to stay home,” he said.
The leading edge of the storm slammed first into Texas and Oklahoma after moving out of the Rockies. The blizzard halted production of the print edition of Wednesday’s Tulsa World, marking the first time in the paper’s nearly 106-year history that is has not published an edition.
Both of Oklahoma’s major airports were closed. Outside Tulsa, at the Hard Rock Casino, the snow caused the partial collapse of a roof, but no injuries were reported.
In Texas, thousands of people were without electricity during frigid conditions. Utility company Oncor reported nearly 27,000 customers without power statewide, with nearly half of the outages in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Other electricity providers took precautions against major blackouts.
St. Louis-based AmerenUE had 1,100 linemen on standby, some borrowed from companies in other states. Six trailers stocked with wire, replacement lines and other goods have been dispatched to possible trouble spots.
Few outages were reported statewide by midday. But Chip Webb, Ameren’s superintendent of reliability support services, expected that to change.
“There is ice on the lines,” and it could be there for days, Webb said.
Ice-laden tree limbs can snap off and plummet onto cars or homes, sometimes with fatal consequences. Ice can also bend and break power lines.
The storm was expected to roll into the Northeast on Wednesday, bringing still more snow to a winter-weary region. Towns that have been hit by several blizzards since December feared they wouldn’t have anywhere to put more snow.
Ice-coated roads were nearly empty in Dallas, where the few motorists who braved the unfamiliar terrain slowed to a crawl as they passed jackknifed tractor-trailers on slick highways. But the NFL stuck to its Super Bowl schedule, holding media activities at Cowboys Stadium in suburban Arlington as planned.
Associated Press writers Don Babwin in Chicago; Jim Salter in St. Louis; Carrie Antlfinger in Milwaukee; and Justin Juozapavicius in Tulsa, Okla., contributed to this report.