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Storm turns some Super Bowl plans into Super Mess
Admin
Sat, 05 Feb 2011 06:19:00 GMT 

Arlington (AP)—Runways too snowy to receive airliners packed with football fans. Sidewalks too icy for cowboy boots. Temperatures too cold to distinguish Dallas from Pittsburgh or Green Bay.

Just two days before the Super Bowl, a fresh blast of snow and ice canceled hundreds of flights, transformed highways into ribbons of white and caused dangerous sheets of ice to fall from Cowboys Stadium, sending at least six people to the hospital. It was enough to turn the biggest week in American sports into a Super Mess.

The six people hurt Friday were private contractors who had been hired by the NFL to prepare the stadium for the game. One man was hit in the head, another in the shoulder. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.

Most stadium entrances were closed as a precaution. Officials raised the temperature inside the arena in an attempt to melt remaining ice.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area received as much as 5 inches of snow overnight— nearly twice its annual average—and by Friday morning downtown Dallas hotels were selling ski hats and scarves alongside cowboy hats. A winter storm warning was issued for suburban Arlington, home of the $1.3 billion stadium where the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers are to play Sunday.

“It looks like, `Oh, no, I’m back in Canada,”’ said Sammy Sandu, a 32-year-old property developer from Kelowna, British Columbia. “It’s just pouring down snow. Are we still at home, or have we left? We didn’t drink that much last night, did we?”

Forecasters expected game day to be mostly sunny, with highs in the 40s, which would probably not be warm enough to melt all the snow and ice.

Sandu made it to Dallas with his father Thursday, but other members of their party weren’t so lucky. His brother still hoped to arrive from Miami in time for the game, but a friend abandoned the trip after a flight from Vancouver was canceled.

Like much of the region, airlines were struggling to recover from a massive blizzard earlier in the week that brought up to 2 feet of snow and bitter cold temperatures to as much as half the nation.

More than 300 arriving flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, a hub for American Airlines. The city’s smaller airport, Love Field, was closed before dawn because of snow on the runways, but it reopened by noon. Love is home to Southwest Airlines.

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