Late Wednesday, President Barack Obama signed requests from Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe for federal emergency declarations. Crews -- even the National Guard in Kentucky -- worked around the clock to resurrect power lines downed by thick ice in both states. Officials in states from Oklahoma to West Virginia fought to do the same.
In the Harrisburg area, mostly minor accidents, a handful of power outages and airport and traffic delays were reported as snow, sleet and rain fell Wednesday. By this morning, however, major routes, as well as the sky, were clear. Temperatures should reach the mid-30s today, and there's a slight chance of snow again Friday night.
Elsewhere, utility officials estimated more than 1.3 million homes and businesses across a wide swath of states were powerless early Thursday, and warned it could be mid-February before some customers had power.
The storm has been blamed for at least 23 deaths so far.
Many flocked to shelters, while others huddled next to wood-burning fires and portable heaters to fend off the frigid night air. Some who stayed put relied on gas stoves to cook food. Meanwhile, emergency officials feared the crisis could escalate as temperatures plunged.
"I'm so worried that we're going to have a death due to hypothermia or carbon monoxide," said John Robinson, the severe weather coordinator for the National Weather Service at North Little Rock, Ark. Space heaters, if improperly used, can generate dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.
Other communities urged people to conserve water because the outages could limit supplies.
Tony Cipolla managed to keep warm by building a fire at his powerless home near Seneca Park in Louisville, cooking a pot of soup over a gas stove. But there wasn't a long-term plan for Cipolla and his two children, ages 5 and 9, if electricity wasn't soon restored.
"If it'll be a couple days, then we'll be in trouble," Cipolla told The Courier-Journal in Louisville, where temperatures dipped into the 20s overnight.
More than a half-million were without power in Kentucky, where the power outages produced by the ice storm were outdone only by the remnants of Hurricane Ike, which lashed the state with fierce winds last year, leaving about 600,000 customers without power.
Tree limbs and power lines crackled like gunfire as they snapped, crashing onto now-impassable roads that hampered recovery efforts from the Southern Plains to the East Coast.
Crews in Indiana had restored power to thousands of customers by early Thursday morning -- but about 89,000 remained in the dark there. Power lines had buckled under three-fourths of an inch of ice. Parts of central Indiana were still digging out from more than a foot of snow.
Delays or cancellations were reported Wednesday at airports including those serving Columbus, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York and Boston.