A major winter storm that already cut electric power to about 350,000 homes and businesses from Texas to the Ohio Valley was set to leave Pennsylvania and New England glazed in ice and smothered in snow Friday, forecasters said.A foot of snow was expected to accumulate in northern New York and northern New England, but it was the ice that threatened to wreak havoc on travel and electric service in the Northeast before the storm heads out to sea late Friday and Saturday, said Rick Otto, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.“Snow is a lot easier to plow than ice,” he said.Even after the storm pushes off to sea late Friday and Saturday, ice and snow were expected to linger through the weekend because of subfreezing temperatures, Otto said.About 350,000 homes and businesses lost power from Texas to Ohio on Thursday as freezing rain and snow weighed down tree limbs and encrusted power lines, part of a winter storm that caused a deadly tornado in Alabama, dumped more than a foot of snow in parts of the Midwest and brought rare measurable snowfall and hundreds of power outages to parts of Texas.The highest totals of power outages blamed on icy or downed power lines were concentrated in Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas and Ohio, but the path of the storm stretched further from the South and Northeast on Thursday. Several schools and universities across the region closed on Friday as a result of poor weather conditions. Along the warmer side of the storm, strong thunderstorms capable of damaging wind gusts and tornadoes were possible Thursday in parts of Mississippi and Alabama, the Storm Prediction Center said.In western Alabama, a tornado that hit a rural area Thursday afternoon killed one person, a female he found under rubble, and critically injured three others. A home was heavily damaged.Tornadoes in the winter are unusual but possible, and scientists have said the atmospheric conditions needed to cause a tornado have intensified as the planet warms.Heavy snow the storm brought to Midwestern states isn't unusual, except the bigger-than-normal path of intense snow in some places, said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. With a warmer climate, people are forgetting what a Midwestern winter had long been like, he said."The only amazing winters I've been able to experience is through my parents' photographs of the 1970s," Gensini, who is 35, said. "This (storm) is par for the course, not only for the past, but winters current."More than 20 inches of snow was reported in the southern Rockies, while more than a foot of snow fell in areas of Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.The flight-tracking service FlightAware.com showed more than 9,000 flights in the U.S. scheduled for Thursday or Friday had been canceled, on top of more than 2,000 cancellations Wednesday as the storm began."Unfortunately, we are looking at enough ice accumulations that we will be looking at significant travel impacts," Orrison said.At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, an American Airlines hub, an estimated 700 customers stayed Wednesday night in its terminals, according to an airport statement. Airport personnel provided pillows, blankets, diapers and infant formula to the marooned travelers. Airport officials said in the same statement that on Thursday night "we are ready to provide assistance in anticipation of customers who may need to stay in the terminals."The Ohio Valley was especially affected Thursday, with 211 flight cancellations at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport on Thursday. An airport spokeswoman told the Cincinnati Enquirer that all flights were canceled Thursday except for Delta Air Lines and American Airlines flights before noon.Nearly all Thursday afternoon and evening flights were canceled at the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, and Friday flights could be as well, spokeswoman Natalie Chaudoin told the Louisville Courier-Journal. UPS suspended some operations Thursday at its Worldport hub at the airport, a rare move.Almost 300,000 homes and businesses were still without power as night fell Thursday, most of them in Tennessee and Ohio, according to the website poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports. As night fell Thursday, almost 150,000 Tennessee customers were without power, including about 135,000 in the Memphis area alone — or one-third of the customers of Memphis Light, Gas & Water.Power restoration could take days, said Gale Carson, the utility's spokeswoman. "It's not going to be a quick process," she said.Six people were taken to a hospital after a 16-vehicle crash on a Memphis highway. Two were in critical condition when taken to an emergency room after the crash on Austin Peay Highway, the Memphis Fire Department said on Twitter. Four others suffered non-critical injuries.Trees sagged under the weight of ice in Memphis, resulting in fallen tree limbs and branches. Parked cars had a layer of ice on them and authorities in several communities around the city warned of some cars sliding off slick roadways.Meantime, almost 70,000 were without power in Ohio, with large percentages of the population in southeastern Ohio in the dark. In Texas, the return of subfreezing weather brought heightened anxiety nearly a year after February 2021's catastrophic freeze that buckled the state's power grid for days, leading to hundreds of deaths in one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history.Facing a new test of Texas' grid, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said it was holding up and on track to have more than enough power to get through the storm. Texas had about 70,000 outages by Thursday morning, nowhere close to the 4 million outages reported in 2021. About half had their power restored by evening.Abbott and local officials said Thursday's outages were due to high winds or icy and downed transmission lines, not grid failures.In Dallas, where snow rarely accumulates, the overnight mix of snow and freezing rain had hardened Thursday afternoon into an icy slick that made roads perilous.South Bend, Indiana, reported a record snowfall for the date on Wednesday with 11.2 inches, eclipsing the previous record of 8 inches set on the date in 1908, said Hannah Carpenter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's office in Syracuse, Indiana.Once the storm pushes through, she said temperatures will see a big drop, with Friday's highs mostly in the upper teens followed by lows in the single digits in northern Indiana, along with bone-chilling wind chills. "It's definitely not going to be melting real quick here," Carpenter said Thursday morning. The frigid temperatures settled into areas after the snowy weather, with Kansas residents awakening to dangerous wind chills of around 15 below zero. In New Mexico, schools and nonessential government services were closed in some areas Thursday because of icy and snow-packed roads.The disruptive storm began Tuesday and moved across the central U.S. on Wednesday's Groundhog Day, the same day the famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. The storm came on the heels of a nor'easter last weekend that brought blizzard conditions to many parts of the East Coast. ___Bleed reported from Little Rock, Arkansas. Associated Press writers Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Paul J. Weber in Austin; Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; Paul Davenport in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland; Rick Callahan in Indianapolis and Jay Reeves in Alabaster, Alabama, contributed to this report.

A Hawaii fisherman with years of experience on the water found himself in a very dangerous situation last weekend.Claude Moreau has been fishing on Maui for over 40 years. He and his daughter, Charme, were on their way back home from Hana last Sunday morning when they dozed off."I sat down because I was tired," Claude, 70, said. "And the next thing I know I was sleeping. I didn't know I was sleeping. Next thing I noticed -- Boom. That's how I woke up."Claude's boat, Maile, smashed into a group of giant rocks, in waters right off the island's north shore. "I looked at him and said 'make a mayday call right now... Mayday mayday," Charme recalled. "He got in Mayday. 'Mayday This is Maile.' Then the boat went under and he went under with the boat."Suddenly, Charme lost sight of him. Her dad was trapped under the boat as it sank."You see those movies where people are trying to save those people underwater and they can barely get to them," she said. "And I had that feeling because I went down and I couldn't see him."Through strength, courage and the will to survive, Charme dove underwater, found her dad and pulled him back to the surface.But now, they still were stuck in the middle of the ocean."I look at the shoreline and crashing huge rocks, and crashing huge lava rocks," Charme said.They had no choice."I held him and I went on my back just like lifeguard style on my back, just pulling and swimming with my head up and taking deep breaths," she remembered. "And I kept telling him don't let the water go in your mouth because that's what was happening, it was going in and drowning both of us."Charme said they swam over an hour to get to the rocky shoreline."The waves are crashing, we have to not bash our heads open," she said. "So that was the point when we were trying to get in, I had that moment, like, wow, we may not make it."The pair took a chance and crashed onto the rocks. "We both tumble and I just see him tumbling, but we're on the rocks and I'm like, 'Oh, we made it!'"They weren't in the clear yet, though, as they had to figure how to get to the top of the giant rock pile to get onto land. Then, out of nowhere, they were given a helping hand. Or a helping rope."Mahalo ke Akua and all his angels for those wonderful fishermen who put ropes," Charme said. "Somebody put ropes. So I was like 'There are ropes! I can make it!'"Charme did make it -- she climbed all the way up and was able to track down people who called 911. The Maui Fire Department flew in a helicopter and plucked Claude from the rocks and took him to the hospital.With just a few bumps and bruises, this fisherman and his daughter are happy to be alive, grateful to their community and want their story to be a lesson.

Watch the video above for more on this story.A woman in British Columbia, Canada, is thanking her lucky stars.Earlier this month, a meteorite hurtling toward Earth crashed into Ruth Hamilton's home. Moments before the impact, she was awoken by her dog barking. The next thing she knew, there was a loud crash."And all of a sudden there was an explosion," Hamilton told CTV News Vancouver. Hamilton then jumped out of bed, turned on the lights and went to inspect the commotion.That's when she noticed a fist-sized hole in her ceiling, right above where she had been fast asleep.After calling 911, she looked around her bed, flipping over her pillow. Then she saw it; a smooth, angular chunk of black rock. "I didn’t feel it," Hamilton said. "It never touched me. I had debris on my face from the drywall, but not a single scratch."Police arrived on the scene, questioning Hamilton and a nearby construction crew, the latter of which told authorities they had seen a "bright ball in the sky," before the impact. A group of researchers from the University of Calgary and Western University inspected Hamilton's home to look for more details about the space rock.Later in the week, they opened their investigation to the rest of Golden, the town in British Columbia where Hamilton lives. The team eventually found a second rock weighing a little more than a pound in the northeast part of town. "We’re trying to reconstruct what the path was through the sky as it arrived," Phil McCausland, a geophysicist at Western University, said. "Because it’s scientifically even more valuable if we can reconstruct what the orbit was before it hit the Earth. It gives us an idea of where it came from."The research team is pleading with people in the area to come forward with any other pieces of evidence of a meteorite impact.Hamilton loaned the meteorite that almost killed her to Western University to photograph, weigh, measure, and to potentially take a sample of it. She expects to get it back by Nov. 30.Officials say that hundreds of meteorites strike the Earth's surface every year. However, it's rare for the space rocks to land in areas that are easily recoverable. "The number one misconception is that they’re hot when they land," Herd said, adding that they begin cooling some 10 to 15 miles up in the atmosphere. "Mrs. Hamilton’s bed didn’t catch fire."Experts say that the chances of a meteorite landing in your home are astronomical. Specifically, about 1 in 4 trillion.When asked if she plans to buy a lottery ticket, she laughed, then replied:"I won the lottery. I won it, I’m alive. I’m laughing about it. I feel pretty blessed."CTV News Vancouver contributed to this report.

As COVID-19 restrictions get lifted, more communities are making plans to make summer more fun.Outdoor events are slowly returning including many concerts. "We're ready. We're excited. We think it's time," said Jim Miller, lead singer of Dangerous Jim and the Slims. Miller said he already booked concerts in Greenhills, Lawrenceburg and Hamilton."Rockin' the Roebling, we'll be doing that," Miller said. "I'm sure that people will be booking as much outside stuff as possible." Party on the purple returns on Wednesdays starting next week. In West Chester, Takeover at the Square and Keehner Park concerts will be returning late June.Music in Mason will also be bringing back tunes to the Mason plaza."That was actually a very big generator of business for us. So, to see those things being brought back in a safe manner, I think is going to be great for us," said Matt Imm, owner of Quatman Cafe' in Mason. The city of Hamilton has a jam-packed schedule of outdoor events starting this Saturday with a Main Street spring shop hop. Alive After 5, concerts at RiversEdge and many other activities are also on the calendar.After taking a year off, one of the largest food truck rallies in the region is headed back to West Chester. "We have about 40 food trucks and other vendors that will be here ready to get our grub on," said Kerry Hendel, vice president of the Union Centre Boulevard Merchant Association. "We also bring in people from northern Kentucky, from over in Indiana as well. So, people who have seen our township before get to experience it for the first time."Depending on where the event is, who is hosting it and the number of people attending, some restrictions could be in place.Since state and federal guidelines can change day by day, so can the guidelines for different events.