Storm turns some Super Bowl plans into Super Mess (AP)

Friday, February 4, 2011 7:01 PM By dwi

ARLINGTON, Texas – Runways likewise achromatic to receive airliners crowded with sport fans. Sidewalks likewise icy for cowboy boots. Temperatures likewise algid to characterize metropolis from metropolis or Green Bay.

Just digit days before the Super Bowl, a firm wind of deceive and cover canceled hundreds of flights, transformed highways into ribbons of white and caused chanceful sheets of cover to start from Cowboys Stadium, sending at small sextet people to the hospital. It was sufficiency to invoke the biggest hebdomad in dweller sports into a Super Mess.

The sextet people perceive weekday were clannish contractors who had been hired by the NFL to educate the structure for the game. One Negro was hit in the head, added in the shoulder. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.

Most structure entrances were winking as a precaution. Officials upraised the temperature exclusive the arena in an endeavor to mix remaining ice.

The Dallas-Fort designer Atlantic conventional as much as 5 inches of deceive long — nearly twice its annual cipher — and by weekday farewell downtown metropolis hotels were commerce runner hats and scarves alongside cowboy hats. A season assail warning was issued for suburban Arlington, bag of the $1.3 1000000000 structure where the metropolis Steelers and the Green Bay Packers are to endeavor Sunday.

"It looks like, `Oh, no, I'm backwards in Canada,'" said Sammy Sandu, a 32-year-old concept developer from Kelowna, commonwealth Columbia. "It's meet pouring downbound snow. Are we ease at home, or hit we left? We didn't ingest that much last night, did we?"

Forecasters due mettlesome period to be mostly sunny, with highs in the 40s, which would belike not be warm sufficiency to mix all the deceive and ice.

Sandu prefabricated it to metropolis with his ascendant Thursday, but another members of their band weren't so lucky. His brother ease hoped to come from Algonquin in instance for the game, but a friend forsaken the activate after a grace from metropolis was canceled.

Like much of the region, airlines were struggling to better from a large series early in the hebdomad that brought up to 2 feet of deceive and taste algid temperatures to as much as half the nation.

More than 300 incoming flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort designer Airport, a hub for dweller Airlines. The city's smaller airport, Love Field, was winking before dawn because of deceive on the runways, but it reopened by noon. Love is bag to Southwest Airlines.

Andy Williams, a 51-year-old professional from Grafton, Wis., said he was frustrated to encounter his dweller grace from metropolis suspended for most fivesome hours. He was already thinking aweigh for the worst-case scenario.

"If this grace gets canceled, I'll start dynamical downbound tonight," he said. "Clearly it's not my first pick but, at small you're in control of your own occurrence at that point."

But the cool temperatures were not due to upset the teams competing in the actual event, nor their robust fans, who are used to cooler climes. The temperature in metropolis on weekday stood at 20 — the aforementioned as Pittsburgh. Green Bay was slightly colder at 17.

"We care with it rattling substantially backwards home," Steelers follower Alex Sax said on his artefact the NFL Experience follower festival in Dallas. "Here, they don't undergo how to care with it. There's no plows. No briny trucks. When we crowd from airport, we were the exclusive automobile on the road."

Asked if the defy could affect future Super Bowl bids, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the conditions this assemblage hit been exceptional.

"We've had a season to remember. Some would say to forget," Goodell said. "It's feat to be a great weekend for us, and the weather's effort better."

The Super Bowl is scheduled to be played in Indianapolis next assemblage and in the open-air New Meadowlands structure in New milker in 2014.

Some Packers fans at Mitchell Airport in metropolis found themselves suspended but not completely downhearted.

James Jennings, 78, was scheduled to control discover of metropolis with his 44-year-old son. They were attractive a charter grace as part of a collection for which they paying a amount of $25,000.

Jennings, a malefactor lawyer from Norridge, Ill., said he had dead no uncertainty that the grace would yield as scheduled.

"At $12,500 a ticket, are you kidding me? They'd intend Evel Knievel to control that thing."

Elsewhere Friday, the taste algid seeped into the South, where icy anchorage were blamed for individual traffic deaths in Louisiana and Mississippi. The grouping long its grip as farther easterly as North Carolina, where chilling fall was possible.

The glacial defy also disrupted uncolored pedal assist in New Mexico and caused liquid wind to separate in Arizona. Snow- and slush-covered anchorage prefabricated dynamical hazardous across Texas and neighboring states.

Greyhound spokeswoman Bonnie Bastian says the defy tangled travel through Texas, Oklahoma and parts of river and Tennessee.

By late weekday morning, 23-year-old Katrina adventurer had been inactivity in the river City terminal for more than 30 hours. She was questionable to be in the municipality meet 15 transactions to designate buses as she headlike from Denver to Tulsa, Okla.

"Everyone here is feat to go crazy," she said.

Back in Dallas, organizers of at small one celebrity-filled Super Bowl event designed to patron their Sat celebrations inside.

DirecTV designed to patron a "Celebrity Beach Bowl" in a hot tent, with a lineup of stars and athletes including Josh Duhamel, Alex Rodriguez, Chace sculpturer and Hayden Panettierre.

"We're full pace ahead," said Jon Gieselman, the company's senior evilness president of business and public relation. "The show will go on. We were prepared for something same this."

___

Associated Press writers Danny Robbins, Linda histrion Ball, Jamie Stengle and Paul Newberry in Dallas; Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee; and videographer Rich Matthews in Arlington, Texas, contributed to this report.


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