Winter weather has brought ice to a wide swathe of the United States, cancelling more than 1700 flights nationwide and snarling highways.

At least two people died on slick roads in Texas and two law officers in the state were seriously injured, including a deputy who was pinned under a truck, authorities said.

As the ice storm advanced eastward on Tuesday, watches and warnings stretched from the western heel of Texas all the way to West Virginia. Several rounds of mixed precipitation — including freezing rain and sleet — were in store for many areas through Wednesday, meaning some regions could be hit multiple times, the federal Weather Prediction Center warned.

Authorities said one person in Austin was killed in a pre-dawn pileup Tuesday. A 45-year-old man also died Monday night after his SUV slid into a highway guardrail near Dallas in slick conditions and rolled down an embankment, according to the Arlington Police Department.

More than 900 flights to or from major US airport hub Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and more than 250 to or from Dallas Love Field were cancelled or delayed on Tuesday, according to the tracking service FlightAware. At Dallas-Fort Worth, more than 50 per cent of Tuesday’s scheduled flights had been cancelled by Tuesday afternoon.

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines cancelled more than 560 flights Tuesday and delayed more than 350 more, FlightAware reported.

About 7000 power outages in Texas were reported as of late Tuesday morning. The outages were due to factors such as ice on power lines or downed trees, and not the performance of the Texas power grid that buckled for days during a deadly winter storm in 2021.

Fleets of emergency vehicles were fanned out among 1600 roads impacted by the freeze.

The storm began on Monday as part of an expected “several rounds” of wintry precipitation through Wednesday across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee.

The weather service has issued a winter storm warning for a large swath of Texas and parts of southeastern Oklahoma and an ice storm warning across the midsection of Arkansas into western Tennessee.

A winter weather advisory is in place in much of the remainder of Arkansas and Tennessee and into much of Kentucky, West Virginia and southern parts of Indiana and Ohio.

By Paul J Webber and Jeff Martin in Austin, Texas

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