Winter weather is blanketing the US as a massive storm bringing frigid temps, snow and floods. Video / AP
A battering winter storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the United States, left millions more to worry about the prospect of further outages and crippled police, fire departments and an airport in snow-blown New York state.
Across the country, officials have attributed at least 18 deaths to exposure, icy car crashes and other effects of the storm,
Two people died in their homes outside Buffalo, New York, when emergency crews couldn’t reach them amid historic blizzard conditions.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that the Buffalo Niagara International Airport will be closed through Monday morning, local time. Some roads would be closed through Christmas day and almost every fire truck in Buffalo was stranded in the snow.
“No matter how many emergency vehicles we have, they cannot get through the conditions as we speak,” Hochul said.
30cm of snow has fallen in Vancouver, Canada, as a result of an Arctic blast affecting a large part of the US and Canada. Photo / AP
Blinding blizzards, freezing rain and frigid cold also knocked out power from Maine to Seattle, while a major electricity grid operator warned the 65 million people it serves across the eastern US that rolling blackouts might be required.
In the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga, two people died in their homes earlier this week when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, according to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.
He said another person died in Buffalo and said the blizzard may be “the worst storm in our community’s history.”
On the Ohio Turnpike, four died in a massive pileup involving some 50 vehicles. A Kansas City, Missouri, driver was killed earlier this week after skidding into a creek, and three others died Wednesday in separate crashes on icy northern Kansas roads.
A utility worker in Ohio was also killed while trying to restore power, according to the Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative. It said the 22-year-old died in “an electrical contact incident” near Pedro in Lawrence County.
Whiteout conditions in rural Linn County, Iowa. Photo / via AP
A woman in Vermont has died in a hospital after a tree broke in the high winds and fell on her. Police in Colorado Springs said they found the dead body of a person who appeared to be homeless as subzero temperatures and snow descended upon the region.
Near Janesville, Wisconsin, a 57-year-old woman died the same day after falling through the ice on a river, the Rock County Sheriff’s Office announced.
In Lansing, Michigan, an 82-year-old woman died after being found in the morning curled up in the snow outside of her assisted living community, Bath Township police reported. A snowplow driver found the woman as temperatures hovered around 10 degrees.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said one person died in a traffic accident attributed to the weather in western Kentucky and a homeless person died in Louisville.
Along Interstate 71 in Kentucky, Terry Henderson and her husband, Rick, were stuck in a massive traffic jam caused by several accidents for 34 hours. The truck drivers weathered the wait in a rig outfitted with a diesel heater, a toilet and a refrigerator but nonetheless regretted trying to drive from Alabama to their home near Akron, Ohio, for Christmas.
“I wish we should have stayed,” said Terry Henderson, after they got moving again. “We should have sat.”
The storm was nearly unprecedented in its scope, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60 per cent of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.
The storm sweeping the US has caused chaos for travellers, here, queueing to check in at the Southwest Airlines counter in Denver International Airport. Photo / AP
As millions of Americans were traveling ahead of Christmas, more than 2360 flights within, into or out of the US were canceled Saturday, local time, according to the tracking site FlightAware. While in Mexico, migrants camped near the US border in unusually cold temperatures as they awaited a US Supreme Court decision on pandemic-era restrictions that prevent many from seeking asylum.
Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.
Western New York often sees dramatic lake-effect snow, which is caused by cool air picking up moisture from the warm water, then dumping it on the land. But even area residents found conditions to be dire on Christmas eve.
