Eastern storm cuts power to tens of thousands as California braces for flooding

Storms dumped heavy snow and freezing rain on a swath of the U.S. East from Kentucky to the nation’s capital, causing hundreds of traffic accidents, knocking out power in places and threatening to flood waterways as temperatures began rising Wednesday. California, meanwhile, was bracing for an atmospheric river that could flood areas ravaged by the recent wildfires. The storm system, which cut a path from Kentucky to Maryland and points farther north on Tuesday, brought more than 14 inches (37 centimeters) of snow to Iron Gate, a tiny Appalachian town in western Virginia, and 12 inches to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, a small city about 65 miles (105 kilometers) to the west, the National Weather Service said. The region’s airports received several inches of snow, according to Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center. Nearly 7,000 flights were canceled or delayed across the United States, including almost 300 into Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware.com.<br/>