Severe weather eases on New Year's Day

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The new year began with more tornado watches and bitter cold temperatures in some areas of the United States but the storms and high winds that left six dead in the country's midsection on Friday eased.

The National Weather Service said that severe weather was most likely on Saturday in the northern Plains and in the southeastern states of Alabama and Mississippi.

Tornado watches were still in effect in southeastern Mississippi and central Alabama on New Years Day from the remnants of a deadly storm system that ripped through several states on Friday.

The storm, packing high winds and tornadoes, caused extensive damage in Missouri, Arkansas and southern Illinois.

Three people were killed in Arkansas and three in Missouri from the storms, and Missouri declared a state of emergency.

In the northern Plains states, a blizzard warning for most of South Dakota expires at noon on Saturday and sections of interstate highways reopened except for I-29 in the eastern part of the state, according to state officials.

"Road conditions in western and southern South Dakota improved quite a bit this morning from what they were," a state Transportation Department spokesman said.

A mother expecting a baby in Timberlake, South Dakota, was taken to the hospital by police escort on New Year's Eve because of the blizzard, officials said.

Some vehicles were abandoned on highways during the blizzard but there were few accidents and no deaths or injuries reported, the South Dakota state officials said.

The state capital of Pierre received 13 inches of snow from the blizzard and temperatures were still at a frigid 5 degrees on Saturday, or well below zero considering the wind chill.

In Wisconsin, authorities reported multiple crashes and slide-offs on Friday night as freezing drizzle passed over the Coulee Region, turning roads to sheets of ice.

The Wisconsin State Patrol reported cars in the ditch along Interstate 90 in La Crosse County, but only two crashes. La Crosse County dispatch received multiple calls of slide-offs.

Elsewhere in the Midwest, Chicago saw the temperature plunge from a balmy 60 degrees on Friday to the 20s overnight.

The clash of warm and cold air was the main reason for the unusually violent weather in the Midwest on Thursday and Friday, meteorologists said.

The freakish weather extended to the West as well. In southeastern Arizona, usually a place where snowbirds from northern states go to get some winter sun, there was a hard freeze overnight.

In Pittsburgh, the National Hockey League moved the start time for the annual outdoor winter classic game to the evening from the afternoon because temperatures above freezing were producing rain rather than snow and ice. The forecast for game time was for clear skies.

Forecasters said New Year's Day football bowl games in Florida and Texas should escape foul weather.

(Writing by Greg McCune, Editing by Peter Bohan)