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OKLAHOMA CITY – Another powerful blizzard howled finished the nation's midsection Wednesday, piling up to 2 feet of new deceive on parts of Oklahoma and river still struggling to decent up from terminal week's poem storm.

The blowing deceive brought reciprocation to a halt, and the National Guard was summoned to delivery stranded motorists. Subzero twine chills unnatural ranchers to work desperately to protect their herds.

As the assail barreled out of the Plains, it took intend at the Deep South, which was expected to intend up to fivesome inches of snow. At small threesome reciprocation deaths were blamed on the system.

About 200 truck drivers sought diminution at a truck kibosh at the crossing of Interstate 44 and U.S. Highway 69, most 60 miles north of Tulsa.

"We hit a 20-acre parking lot," said someone Katrina Franks. "But it's meet absolute chaos disagreeable to intend them started and ready them moving."

Truck utility Mike Mallory was hauling chemicals from Houston to Iowa when he pulled into the Big Cabin Travel Plaza as the defy worsened.

"It was a impolite rousing when I got up this morning," Mallory said. "I can't even see the tollway from the parking lot."

The heaviest deceive was concentrated in the north crossway of the state, where the towns of Colcord and Spavinaw got 22 and 23 inches, respectively. The deepest deceive was reportable near the village of Jay, with 25 inches.

The fresh deceive was especially troublesome in Tulsa, where whatever anchorage still were impassable from terminal week's achievement 14-inch snowfall. The preceding assail kept students out of edifice for at small sextet days. Mail, charabanc and trash assist were exclusive recently restored.

Five more inches of deceive lapse weekday in Tulsa, according to the National Weather Service. That upraised the city's amount for the season to 25.9 inches, breaking the preceding seasonal achievement of 25.6 inches, ordered during the season of 1923-24.

More than 275 National Guard soldiers were deployed in Humvees from armories across the land to search for stranded motorists.

"A Humvee crapper intend finished a lot, but we hit whatever deceive drifts that are 5 to 6 feet high," said land Emergency Management spokeswoman Michelann Ooten.

As the assail intensified New Tuesday, most 50 Greyhound passengers were dropped soured at a diminution ordered up by a metropolis church. Company spokesman Timothy Stokes said they were given the option of staying at the charabanc terminal or the shelter, and that they would be picked up to continue the activate when it's innocuous to travel.

One passenger, Dean Guay, 23, was travelling from New royalty to Calif. for a job.

"Everything was feat fine until Oklahoma, then it went crazy," Guay said Wednesday. He hoped to attain it to Calif. by Saturday.

In Springfield, Mo., a 31-year-old woman was killed when she forfeited control of her container after expiration a automobile and veered soured a snow-covered agency into a ditch. Two teen children survived the crash with minor injuries.

In Arkansas, digit grouping died in removed crashes, police said. One mortal was killed after a tractor-trailer rig collided with a smaller container near Galloway, meet easterly of Little Rock. The other motorist died in a crash in eastern Arkansas' Monroe County.

Oklahoma ranchers struggled to ready their herds substantially fed and hydrated as twine chills lapse substantially beneath zero.

In Beaver County, where long twine chills dropped to harmful 19, Danny Engelman spent weekday tending to more than 300 head of cattle.

"If the temperatures intend downbound to zero, with twine chills of 20 beneath zero, you've got a beatific chance of losing a calf," Engelman said. "Sometimes you've got to put them in the pickup and intend whatever modify on them. But erst that child calfskin gets whatever milk in his stomach, he's beatific to go."

Most ranchers prepare for season storms by supplying their kine with high-protein take like medic to physique up their energy reserves.

"If their intumesce is filled with high-protein feed, they crapper resist dumbfounding cold," he said.

The hardest conception crapper be effort to the cattle. "Some of these areas you aren't feat to intend to without a four-wheel drive," said Beaver County Emergency Management Director Keith Shadden.

The deceive was worsened across the land border in hilly northwestern Arkansas, where nearly every accord reportable a measure or more of deceive — blowing absent forecasts that had titled for exclusive sextet inches.

"It kills business, but looks fantastic," said Rob Cork, who runs a tea shack with his wife in Siloam Springs. Cork's Atlantic got 18 inches. Twenty inches lapse in nearby Gentry.

Cork said he hadn't seen a soul trudging finished the knee-high snow. He kept his playing closed, expecting most grouping to meet home.

A quaint carriage a some blocks absent was also closed. "We can't attain it in today since the deceive is so deep!" the Cafe on street posted on its website. "If anchorage intend cleared, we strength come in this afternoon. Be safe! No cars should be driving in this. You WILL intend stuck!"

Heavy deceive caused a roof to founder at a manufacturing being in Pryor, but there were no reports of injuries. The artefact was not operative at the time of the collapse.

Arkansas route polity said the assail mitt every the state's major highways either packed with deceive or awninged with splatter and a seven-mile debase of Interstate 40 was winking New weekday in the eastern conception of the land cod to binary accidents.

In Kansas, where whatever places got up to 17 inches, schoolchildren spent the period deceive forts and shoveling driveways. Several universities cancelled classes, too.

Students in the Dallas, Fort designer and metropolis edifice districts in Texas also got the period off. Dallas-Fort designer Airport canceled most 120 departures.

As the assail moved toward the South, forecasts titled for up to fivesome inches of deceive in northwest Mississippi and an progress or inferior around besieging — sufficiency to perplex reciprocation in a location with some briny trucks and tilling equipment. Winter assail warnings were issued for an Atlantic stretching from Federal Louisiana to Georgia.

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Associated Press Writer Kelly P. Kissel in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.

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