(Freezing Temperatures to the North and above Freezing in the South Creates Major Ice Storm) The storm has been blamed for at least 20 deaths and a glaze of ice and snow caused widespread power failures from the Southern Plains to the East Coast. Authorities said it could be a week before some communities have electricity again. Tree limbs encased in ice tumbled onto roads and crashed onto power lines in hard-hit Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma on Tuesday and overnight. In Arkansas - where ice was 3 inches thick in some places - people huddled next to portable heaters and wood-burning fires as utilities warned electricity may be out for a week or more.

More than 300,000 customers in Arkansas lacked power Wednesday morning and more than 375,000 in Kentucky. Public Service Commission spokesman Andrew Melnykovych in Kentucky said the figure is second only to the approximately 600,000 Kentucky customers who lost power when the remnants of Hurricane Ike lashed the state with fierce winds last September. In Indiana and Ohio, more than 160,000 homes and businesses were in the dark as ice and snow coated the states. Ohio's top Republican lawmaker, Senate President Bill Harris, slipped on ice outside a hotel near the Statehouse in Columbus, broke a leg and will miss the governor's State of the State address Wednesday.

In Louisville Ky., more than a million homes and businesses left in the cold without power Thursday in the wake of an icy winter storm will face a lengthy wait for electricity to come back, even as federal help was promised to two states hit hardest by the blast. Late Wednesday, President Barack Obama signed requests from Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe for federal emergency declarations. Crews - even the National Guard in Kentucky - worked around the clock to resurrect power lines downed by thick ice in both states. Officials in states from Oklahoma to West Virginia fought to do the same. Utility officials estimated more than 1.3 million homes and businesses across a wide swath of states were powerless early Thursday, and warned it could be mid-February before some customers had power. The storm has been blamed for at least 23 deaths so far.

It May be Weeks before some parts affected by this Ice Storm will get Power Back:

Temperatures dipped into the 20s overnight after the above freezing areas experienced the freezing rain and sleet creating this havoc. More than a half-million were without power in Kentucky, where the power outages produced by the ice storm were outdone only by the remnants of Hurricane Ike, which lashed the state with fierce winds last year, leaving about 600,000 customers without power. "We've got lots of counties that do not have any communication, any heat, any power," Beshear, the state's governor, said Wednesday. Tree limbs and power lines crackled like gunfire as they snapped, crashing onto now-impassable roads that hampered recovery efforts from the Southern Plains to the East Coast.

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