5 die in plane crash as storm slams five states

Five people, including two children, were killed when a single-engine plane crashed in eastern Texas during a storm, it was reported Tuesday.

Ernest Contreras of the Texas Department of Public Safety said the crash happened Monday night just before 10 p.m. (11 p.m. ET) in a farming and ranching community in Brazos County. Everyone on the plane was killed.

Contreras said the flight originated in Atlanta, stopped in Jackson, Miss., and was headed for Waco, Texas, when it crashed.

Contreras said the severe weather may have played a role in the crash, but authorities were still investigating.

Two adults, a two-year-old child and a teenager were found dead inside the plane, while another adult was found about 50 yards away, KBTX.com reported, citing Department of Public Safety troopers.

KBTX.com said the pilot had spoken to air traffic control at Forth Worth after getting into bad weather and was told to take a specific course, but flew in the opposite direction, according to the DPS.

"It's a pretty horrific scene over there," Sgt. Charles Booker told KBTX.com.

Travel warning
The storm, which brought strong winds and snow to five states, crawled deeper into the central U.S. early Tuesday, with forecasters warning that pre-holiday travel would be difficult if not impossible across the region.

Earlier, authorities said six people had died in traffic accidents as a result of the bad weather.

Four were killed when their vehicle collided with a pickup truck in part of eastern New Mexico where blizzard-like conditions are rare, and a prison guard and inmate died when a prison van crashed along an icy roadway in eastern Colorado.

From New Mexico to Kansas, hotels were filling up quickly along major roadways and travel throughout the region was difficult.

Nearly 100 rescue calls came in from motorists in northern Texas as blizzard conditions forced closed part of Interstate 40, a major east-west route, Monday night.

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New Mexico shut down a portion of Interstate 25, the major route heading northeast of Santa Fe into Colorado, and Clayton police dispatcher Cindy Blackwell said her phones were "ringing off the hook" with calls from numerous motorists stuck on rural roads.

About 10 inches of snow had fallen in western Kansas before dawn Tuesday, and several more inches ? along with strong wind gusts ? were expected, National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Russell said.

"We're talking about whiteout conditions," he said.

Video: Snowstorm threatens Southwest, Great Plains

The storm came after much of the country had a relatively mild fall. Except for the October snowstorm blamed for 29 deaths on the East Coast, there has been little rain or snow.

Many of the areas hit Monday enjoyed relatively balmy 60-degree temperatures just 24 hours earlier.

The snowstorm lumbered into the region Monday, turning roads to ice and reducing visibility to zero. The conditions put state road crews on alert and had motorists taking refuge and early exits off major roads across the region.

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Linda Pape, general manager of the Clayton Super 8 motel in Colorado, said it was packed with unhappy skiers who had been headed to lodges in Colorado and elsewhere in New Mexico.

Bill Cook, who works at the Best Western in Clayton, said he hadn't seen such a storm since the 1970s, when cattle had to be airlifted with helicopters and the National Guard was called in to help out. His hotel was packed Monday with people "happy they have a room," and some of the children were playing outside in the snow.

Though some drivers were inconvenienced, farmers and meteorologists said the storm was bringing much needed moisture ? first rain, then snow as temperatures dropped ? to areas of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas that had been parched by a drought that started in the summer of 2010.

White Christmas?
Virginia Kepley, 73, spent Monday afternoon baking pumpkin bread to give as Christmas gifts while snow fell on her farm near Ulysses, Kansas.

"I decided to try to get as much done today in case the electricity goes off and I can't make it tomorrow," she said.

Kepley was grateful for the snow after some of her family's wheat never got enough moisture to sprout last season. A new crop had been planted in the fall for harvest next summer.

"It is wonderful for the wheat," Kepley said. "At least we have wheat we can see this year."

Meanwhile, weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Erdman said there was a chance of snow in the Northeast for the Christmas weekend.

"There are two possible scenarios for Christmas weekend in the Northeast," he said.

Erdman said an area including Philadelphia, New York City, Hartford, and Boston could see accumulations of snow, although also with a chance of rain.

However he said under the second scenario, the I-95 Boston-to-Washington corridor could get "predominantly rain."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45734726/ns/weather/

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