Ice storm hits parts of Texas, canceling flights, crippling traffic

DALLAS - An ice storm battered parts of Texas on Monday, knocking out power to thousands of homes, causing hundreds of traffic accidents and prompting more than 1,500 airline flight cancellations.

The storm, packing high winds and freezing rain, coated highways with sheets of ice, and authorities advised commuters to stay off the roads. The cold was expected to last another day, keeping road surfaces slick.

Snow and freezing rain fell in parts of New Mexico and Colorado, while Utah and northern Arizona were also under winter storm warnings, the weather service said.

At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, one of the busiest in the United States and a hub for American Airlines, nearly 1,100 flights were cancelled as of Monday afternoon, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.

At Love Field in Dallas, a major airport for Southwest Airlines, more than 100 flights were cancelled, it said.

In Tennessee, at least 22 people have been killed in the past few days because of icy winter conditions, the state's Emergency Management Agency said.

Eleven people have died in Kentucky from the snow and ice that began pummeling the state on Feb. 16, officials said.

In Colorado, an avalanche killed a skier traversing an area outside the boundaries of the Aspen Mountain resort on Monday, marking the fifth fatality from a snow slide in the United States this season, authorities said.

Texas schools were closed on Monday around Dallas and Fort Worth, while traffic on highways was sparse. Iced-over trees knocked down power lines and left thousands without electricity, officials said. Police in Texas reported hundreds of car accidents.

BreeAnna Moore, 27, skipped driving to work in Fort Worth after watching live traffic camera footage. "I really can't afford to miss a day, but then again I don't think it's worth my life or my car trying to make it in," she said.

The trial of the man accused of killing Chris Kyle, the former US Navy SEAL who was the subject of the movie "American Sniper," was postponed on Monday because of ice that coated the Texas city of Stephenville, southwest of Fort Worth.

Salt trucks were deployed in Oklahoma, where about an inch of ice and snow coated roads.