
PORTLAND, Ore. >> Two weeks of storms that have turned roads into icy death traps, frozen people to death from Oregon to Tennessee and caused power outages that could take weeks to fix continued to sock both coasts with another round of weather chaos Friday.
The rain, snow, wind and bitterly cold temperatures have been blamed for at least 50 deaths in the U.S. over the past two weeks as a series of storms moved across the country. Schools and roads have closed and air traffic has been snarled
There is hope. The forecast for next week calls for above average temperatures across almost the whole country, according to the National Weather Service.
Snow was falling in New York City, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., on Friday. But the biggest problems remained in places hit hard by storms earlier in the week.
On the West Coast, Oregon’s governor declared a statewide emergency Thursday night, nearly a week after the start of a crippling ice storm.
Thousands of residents have been without power since last weekend in parts of Oregon’s Willamette Valley because of the freezing rain.
“We lost power on (Jan. 13), and we were told yesterday that it would be over two weeks before it’s back on,” said Jamie Kenworthy, a real estate broker in Jasper in Lane County.
More than 100,000 customers remained without electricity Friday morning in the state after back-to-back storms, according to poweroutage.us.


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