Winter storm bites north Mississippi with outages and closures

Winter storm dumped snow and freezing rain across northern Mississippi, causing widespread damage and outages—peaking at about 12% of customers—as well as school closures in Oxford/Lafayette County and other districts. Officials warned conditions could worsen before improving, with FEMA declaring an emergency for Mississippi and power infrastructure damaged across counties from Oxford to Natchez, creating dangerous travel and requiring days to restore service.