Ice Storm.

The National Weather Service posted ice and winter storm warnings Tuesday for parts of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois. Missouri declared an emergency on Sunday and put the National Guard on alert. Watch people cope with ice, power outages »

Oklahoma utilities said a half-million customers were blacked out as power lines snapped under the weight of ice and falling tree branches, the biggest power outage in state history, and utilities in Missouri said more than 100,000 homes and business had no power there.

"If you do the math, probably one out of three Oklahomans has no electricity at this point," said Gil Broyles, a spokesman for Oklahoma Gas & Electric, the state's largest utility. Watch mayor say some neighborhoods face 'catastrophe' »

Roughly 11,000 customers were blacked out in southern Illinois and more than 5,000 had no electric heat or lights in Kansas, where Gov. Kathleen Sebelius declared a statewide state of emergency.

[...]

The Oklahoma City suburb of Jones, a town of 2,500 people, had low water pressure because there was no electricity to run well pumps, and firefighters said an early morning fire destroyed most of the community's high school.

The icy weather stretched into the Northeast, where many schools across upstate New York were closed or started late because of icy roads.

On ice-covered Interstate 40 west of Okemah, Oklahoma, four people died in "one huge cluster of an accident" that involved 11 vehicles, said Highway Patrol Trooper Betsey Randolph.

Eight other people died on icy Oklahoma roads, and Missouri had two storm-related deaths -- one on a slippery highway and another when a tree limb fell on a 92-year-old man's head. In addition, a homeless person died of hypothermia in Oklahoma City, the state medical examiner's office said