United States:
A historic and brutal winter storm sent some 240 million Americans Friday with severe weather warnings, while the United States faced holiday travel chaos, with thousands of flights canceled and highways closed.
Heavy snowfall and howling winds rocked millions of people’s holiday plans during one of the busiest times of the year, just days before Christmas, when a massive cold front swept down from the Arctic, freezing much of the country, including normally temperate southern states. .
Temperatures dipped below -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degrees Celsius) in some locations, with as many as 240 million people — some 72 percent of the U.S. population — under winter weather warnings or advisories, according to the National Weather Service.
“Winter weather hazards remain in effect from the Canadian border south to the Rio Grande (border river with Mexico), the Gulf Coast and Florida’s central peninsula, while extending from the Pacific Northwest to the East Coast,” the NWS said in a report. start Friday.
The warnings appear to be one of the most sweeping series of U.S. winter weather advisories ever.
Meteorologists said it was so cold in places — 10 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded Friday in normally mild Dallas, Texas — that anyone who ventured outside was at risk of frostbite within minutes.
The biting cold is a direct concern for more than a million customers, mostly in the southern and eastern U.S., who were without power Friday morning, according to electricity tracker poweroutage.us.
Road conditions remained treacherous even as 100 million people were expected to take to the roads, according to the American Automobile Association.
Transportation departments in North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, Iowa and elsewhere reported near-zero visibility, icy roads and blizzards, strongly urging residents to stay home.
Two traffic fatalities were reported in Oklahoma on Thursday, as the Weather Channel cited the Kansas Highway Patrol as saying three people died in traffic accidents in that Midwestern state, citing weather as a contributing factor.
Chaos in the air
More than 3,520 U.S. flights had already been canceled as of Friday and another 1,900 delayed, according to tracking website Flight Aware, many at international hubs New York, Seattle and Chicago’s O’Hare.
US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg warned that holiday travel would be hit hard.
“To say we have the opposite of cooperating weather would be an understatement,” he told MSNBC, noting that some 10 percent of commercial flights in the US were canceled Thursday, a move that will have dire consequences. for travel.
I-90, a major highway that runs through the north, was closed in South Dakota, and officials said it wouldn’t reopen until later Friday.
“Crews are using all available resources from across the state to clean up and restore travel,” the South Dakota Department of Transportation said.
“Multiple highways are currently listed as ‘Road impassable’…travel on the road section is physically impossible due to widespread deep snow and drifting.”
Holiday travel volume is expected to be close to pre-pandemic levels, with the busiest day on Thursday, three days before Christmas.
AccuWeather forecasters have said the storm could quickly strengthen into what’s known as a “bomb cyclone” through a process called “bombogenesis,” when air pressure drops and a cold air mass collides with warm air.
Rapid freezing
Such extreme weather can be dangerous, said Rich Maliawco, chief forecaster for the National Weather Service in Glasgow, Montana, where wind chill dropped to a crushing -60 Fahrenheit overnight.
“When it’s that cold, anyone can get into trouble,” Maliawco told AFP.
“With chills like this, if you don’t wear those warm layers…unprotected skin can freeze in less than five minutes.”
The conditions were cold enough for people to post videos of themselves performing the “boiling water challenge,” in which boiling water is thrown into the air and instantly freezes.
“We created our own cloud @ -17~CHECK~ F (-27~CHECK~ C) at the #Missoula International Airport,” NWS Missoula tweeted in Montana.
Minneapolis and Saint Paul have accumulated more than 8 inches of snow in a 24-hour period, the NWS said in a Thursday update.
Farther east in Buffalo, New York, forecasters called it a “once-in-a-generation storm” with wind gusts exceeding 65 mph, chills as low as -10 to -20 F, and power outages.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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