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The Latest: N. Carolina wreck is 4th traffic death in storm

The Latest: N. Carolina wreck is 4th traffic death in storm

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — The Latest on the U.S. winter storm (all times local):

4:15 p.m.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper says a car skidded off an icy interstate in North Carolina, killing one person.

The death Sunday morning in Montgomery County south of Asheboro is the first reported death from this weekend's winter storm in the state. It is the fourth death from the storm in the U.S., all in vehicle wrecks.

Cooper says two other people in the car were seriously injured when the vehicle slid into a tree on Interstate 73/74. The names of the people killed and injured were not released.

Cooper says troopers have seen a sharp increase in the number of wrecks Sunday afternoon as the sun came out because many roads remained icy as temperatures stayed below freezing.

Cooper asked North Carolina residents to stay inside. He says schools across much of the state will be closed Monday because road conditions will remain hazardous.

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9:45 a.m.

Rescuers have found two hikers missing for more than a day in the frigid North Carolina mountains without food and water and only a small fire for warmth.

The North Carolina Emergency Response Team said in a news release that a helicopter using a tool that can detect heat found the hikers around 5 p.m. Saturday in the Shining Rock Wilderness area about 25 miles southwest of Asheville.

Authorities say the hikers had called 911 on Friday and again Saturday morning, saying their situation was getting dire. But the helicopter couldn't fly until the storm that dumped about 7 inches of snow in the area cleared.

It took rescuers about two hours to get to the men. They were taken to the hospital, and authorities did not know their conditions.

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2:05 a.m.

The winter storm that coated parts of the South in snow and ice and has been blamed for at least three deaths has set its sights on New England, where travel conditions have already become treacherous and a chain-reaction accident on a Connecticut road involved nearly two dozen cars.

Before the storm churned north along the Atlantic coast, it left icy conditions in Alabama and Mississippi, where a former governor was hospitalized after he slipped and fell on his icy driveway. At least seven locations in North Carolina reported 10 inches of snow as the storm entered the state on Saturday, and blizzard conditions occurred in southeast Virginia.

Traffic deaths in Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky have been blamed on the storm, which caused hundreds of accidents across the region.

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Finley reported from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Tom Foreman Jr. reported from Winston-Salem. Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, Bob Salsberg in Boston and John Nicholson in New York contributed to this report.

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