February 5, 1996
Web posted at: 5:00 p.m. EST
(CNN) -- Most parts of the United States had good reason to complain about the weather Monday. Freezing temperatures extended into central and southern Florida overnight, damaging some of the state's annual $1.2 billion citrus crop that remained to be picked. Forecasters said record cold will linger along the East Coast and power remained out for a quarter-million North Carolina customers in North Carolina who lost electricity in a winter storm.
In the west, a Colorado avalanche killed one person. Ice-coated surfaces in Oregon caused vehicles and pedestrians to slide uncontrollably. (510K QuickTime movie) And in northern California, heavy rain caused mudslides and other damage. A break in the rain prompted forecasters to scale back a flood warning on the Napa and Russian Rivers.
"We got hammered," said Shannon Ross, a spokeswoman for Florida Citrus Mutual, a 12,000 member grower cooperative. She said damage included ice in fruit, defoliation and frozen tree limbs. If damaged oranges are mature, they can still be processed for juice, but if the fruit is immature "its a total loss," Ross said. Defoliation and frozen limbs would hurt citrus yields long term, she said.
"We expect to have some juice yield loss," said the organization's Bobby McKown, a reference to damaged oranges producing a reduced amount of juice. However, the damage was not as severe as "the killer tree freeze of the 1980s," he said.
Sub-zero temperatures that can cause significant damage to fruit held for more than four hours overnight as far south as La Belle," Ross told CNN. La Belle is near Fort Myers in southwestern Florida. In the northern end of the state, Jacksonville had a record low of 19 degrees while the windchill in Panama City in the Florida panhandle measured minus three degrees.
At Plant City near Tampa, strawberry farmers sprayed their plants with water. The ice that forms on the plants insulates the strawberries from the colder winter air. The ice is a "crop saver," explained Stan Jayson of CNN Tampa affiliate WTVT. (1 MB QuickTime movie) The Florida strawberry crop is worth at least $100 million.
Near freezing temperatures were reported as far south as Palm Beach County with high 30s reported Monday morning as far south as Miami. Ross said it will be several weeks before the freeze's full economic impact on Florida is known.
Record low temperatures were recorded on Monday in Charleston, South Carolina, Jackson, Mississippi, Birmingham, Alabama, Roanoke, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland. The overnight temperature in Raleigh, North Carolina plunged to zero. North Carolina was the hardest hit of several states where repairs continued on power lines downed by an ice storm. According to a spokesman for Duke Power, 250,000 residents of North Carolina were still without power at 7 a.m. EST Monday. Power was restored to 10,000 homes over the night. Some residents would not get their power back until Thursday or Friday, the spokesman said. North Carolina officials said 52 emergency shelters had been opened to house anyone without heat.
South Carolina ordered some state offices in the northern part of the state to remain closed. Schools were closed in several counties. About 8,000 utility customers in the Greenville-Spartanburg area lost power overnight.
In Georgia, schools were closed aross the northern part of the state as school officials opted not to put buses on slick roadways with single digit temperatures. Georgia Power, the state's largest electrical utility, asked its industrial customers to curb demand Monday morning.
In Alabama, the state emergency officials reported 50,000 people in four counties were without power and a section of Interstate 20 between Birmingham and Atlanta was closed Monday morning closed due to icing.
Icy roads in eastern Tennessee closed portions of Interstate 24 east of Mounteagle. About 1,000 people in the state were without power.
The Mississippi Valley Gas Company in Jackson asked its customers to conserve energy Monday, saying there was a shortage of natural gas because of heavy demand. Spokesman Phil Hardwick said continued heavy use of gas across the south had reduced pressure in supply lines.
In Oregon, another blast of freezing rain made traveling difficult and closed schools Monday. A Delta Air Lines jet with 79 people aboard slid off the taxiway at Portland International Airport about 1:30 a.m. PST. No one was hurt. In Salem alone, dozens of people slipped and fell Sunday on ice-slicked roads and sidewalks.
There was better news, however, in northern California where forecasters Monday scaled back a flood warning on the swollen Napa and Russian Rivers. But recent heavy rain was blamed for Sunday's drowning death of a 42-year-old homeless man in Napa Creek as well as a mudslide in Marin County that forced the evacuation of two families in the town of Santa Venetia.
Bart Welles, who lives in the area, said he saw a "wall of mud" coming down a hillside. (179K AIFF sound or 179K WAV sound) Another local resident, John Bartunek, saw "a raging torrent" in his backyard made up of "water, mud, rocks, firewood and patio furniture." Officials estimated the mud that washed down the hillside in Santa Venetia was enough to fill 2,000 dump trucks.
A rock slide on Sunday evening crashed into two cars about eight miles west of Yosemite near Savage's Trading Post. One boulder reportedly was the size of a small refrigerator. In Oakland, a 100-foot Eucalyptus tree that crushed at least one house in the city's Montclair neighborhood late Sunday night.
Forecasters had said the rising Russian River at Guerneville would crest Monday morning as high as 39 feet -- 7 feet above flood level. But they later revised the prediction downward and at 5 a.m. PST the river crested at 35.1 feet, 3 feet above flood stage. The only serious problem was in Guerneville, where schools were closed because of flooded roads. Along the Napa River, the water pushed at or near the banks in St. Helena and the city of Napa.
In Colorado, a backcountry snowboarder died in a Rocky Mountain avalanche Sunday. Michael Merick, 23, of Frisco, Colorado was killed as he and a companion were snowboarding about a mile west of the Arapahoe Basin ski area. The companion, Mike Dunham, 23, of Santa Cruz, California, survived. Rescue workers found Dunham, only partially buried, shortly after arriving, witnesses said.
Merick remained buried under snow for almost three hours before he was found. Rescue workers found him after locating his gloves and other parts of his clothing and gear. That brings Colorado's toll for dead or missing in snowslides this winter to five. More than 600 avalanches have been reported since Colorado went on avalanche alert January 24.
In Chicago, Monday temperatures were expected to climb to just below freezing after days of frigid readings. A cold-weather emergency continued in New York City, allowing police and emergency workers to pick up people they consider to be at risk and take them to homeless shelters.
![[Imagemap]](/US/images/9601/navbar.gif){kind=small}
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Copyright © 1996 Cable News Network, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.