Snow, cold make Dallas feel more like Green Bay

Snow in Dallas
Fans walk through the through the snow near the NFL Super Bowl Experience during a winter storm, Friday, Feb. 4, 2011, in Dallas. The Green Bay Packers face the Pittsburgh Steelers in NFL football's Super Bowl XLV on Sunday, in Arlington, Texas.
Matt Slocum/ASSOCIATED PRESS

By SCHUYLER DIXON, Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) - Football fans whose flights had been canceled struggled Saturday to get to Dallas for Sunday's big game, while those already in town for the Super Bowl were contending with temperatures and snow typical of Pittsburgh and Green Bay but unusual in Texas.

A fresh blast of snow and ice canceled hundreds of flights Friday, 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 NFL said those hurt by the falling ice included private contractors it hired 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.

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Alison Crombie, a spokeswoman for Getty Images, said Saturday one of its photographers, Win McNamee, also was hurt. He was flying home and would be assessed by his doctor there, she said.

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.

Andy Williams, a 51-year-old attorney from Grafton, Wis., said he was frustrated to find his American flight from Milwaukee delayed for about five hours. He was already planning ahead for the worst-case scenario.

"If this flight gets canceled, I'll start driving down tonight," he said. "Clearly it's not my first choice but, at least you're in control of your own destiny at that point."

The winter weather wasn't expected to faze the teams competing in the real event, nor their hardy fans, who are used to cooler climes. The temperature in Dallas on Friday stood at 20 - the same as Pittsburgh. Green Bay was slightly colder at 17.

"We deal with it very well back home," Steelers fan Alex Sax said on his way the NFL Experience fan festival in Dallas. "Here, they don't know how to deal with it. There's no plows. No salt trucks. When we drove from airport, we were the only car on the road."

Asked if the weather could affect future Super Bowl bids, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the conditions this year have been unusual.

"We've had a winter to remember. Some would say to forget," Goodell said. "It's going to be a great weekend for us, and the weather's getting better."

The Super Bowl is scheduled to be played in Indianapolis next year and in the open-air New Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey in 2014.

Some Packers fans at Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee found themselves delayed but not completely downhearted.

James Jennings, 78, was scheduled to fly out of Milwaukee with his 44-year-old son. They were taking a charter flight as part of a package for which they paid a total of $25,000.

Jennings, a criminal lawyer from Norridge, Ill., said he had absolutely no doubt that the flight would leave as scheduled.

"At $12,500 a ticket, are you kidding me? They'd get Evel Knievel to fly that thing."

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Associated Press writers Danny Robbins, Linda Stewart Ball, Jamie Stengle and Paul Newberry in Dallas and videographer Rich Matthews in Arlington, Texas, contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)