Major storm dumping ice and snow on much of Northeast after hitting South

A major winter storm that already cut electric power to about 350,000 homes and businesses from Texas to the Ohio Valley and caused thousands of flight cancelations nationwide will 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.