Storms dumped heavy snow and freezing rain on a swath of the eastern U.S. stretching from Kentucky to the nation’s capital, causing hundreds of traffic accidents, knocking out power in places and threatening to flood waterways as temperatures began rising Wednesday. The storm system that cut a path from Kentucky to Maryland and points farther north on Tuesday brought more than 14 inches of snow to Iron Gate, and 12 inches to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the National Weather Service said.

By Wednesday, more than 190,000 customers in Virginia and nearly 16,000 in North Carolina had lost electricity, according to PowerOutage.us. Appalachian Power, which serves a million customers in West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, said Tuesday that it had 5,400 workers trying to restore power.

The region’s airports received several inches of snow, according to Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center.

“After a pretty quiet few seasons here, things have kind of picked back up again,” he said.

— The Associated Press