(Chicago) One million American households without electricity, thousands of canceled flights, blocked highways and some fatal accidents: In the USA, the day before Christmas on Friday was disrupted by a winter storm of rare intensity.
Updated yesterday at 10:19pm.
Kamil Krzaczynski with AFP offices in US Agence France press
“Historically,” according to the American Weather Service (NWS), it caused heavy snowfall, icy gusts and temperatures that dropped to -48 °C in places, which could turn boiling water into ice droplets in no time at all.
As of Friday morning, more than 240 million people, or 70% of Americans, were affected by warnings or calls for caution across the United States.
PHOTO SETH HERALD, AGENCY FRANCE-PRESS
Antonio Smothers tries to start his vehicle Friday in Nashville, Tennessee.
The phenomenon caused traffic chaos. A tile as millions of Americans flood the streets and airports for the holiday season.
In the state of New York, a travel ban was issued in Erie County. “We’restayinghome […] I can’t see across the street because of the snow,” Jennifer Orlando, who is affected by this ban in the city of Hamburg, told AFP.
She was without power for about four hours due to the accident of a vehicle colliding with a power line, she said.
As of Friday, up to around 1.5 million homes were without power, particularly in North Carolina, Maine and Virginia, according to specialist website PowerOutage.us. As of Friday night, they were still a million in the dark.
The storm was particularly impressive in its magnitude, stretching from the Canadian border in the north to the Mexican border in the south.
Shelters have opened in El Paso, Texas to help migrants from Mexico protect themselves from hypothermia in freezing temperatures.
But many are too suspicious to take up the offer, and many of them “just sleep wrapped in blankets,” Rosa Falcon, a 56-year-old volunteer, told AFP.
chaos in traffic
As of Friday night, specialist website FlightAware listed 5,500 canceled flights in the United States, with Seattle, New York, Chicago and Detroit airports hardest hit.
PHOTO MANDEL NGAN, AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
A traveler looks at the arrivals and departures board at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia on Friday.
To get to Los Angeles, Christine Lerosen was unable to board in Vancouver, Canada, and had to persuade her brother to drive her to Seattle to catch another plane with a stopover in Denver.
“My flight from Seattle was delayed, my flight from Denver was delayed and now they’ve lost my luggage,” she sighed to ABC7.
Several states have declared states of emergency, including New York, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Georgia and North Carolina. With visibility near zero, blizzard and frost hitting much of the country, the roads have become very dangerous.
“People should stay home and not venture out on the streets,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear warned on CNN. Your family wants to see you at home for Christmas, but most of all they want to see you alive. »
He confirmed that three people had died on the streets of Kentucky. At least two people have died on the street in Oklahoma, according to the agency responsible for emergency management in that state.
According to local media, at least one person was killed in a massive collision involving about 50 vehicles on a freeway in Ohio. Traffic on a freeway in Michigan was halted Friday morning due to an accident involving nine semi-trailers.
“bomb depth”
This storm of rare intensity is caused by a “low-pressure bomb”: a powerful conflict between two air masses, one very cold from the Arctic and the other tropical from the Gulf of Mexico, aggravated by the fact that the atmospheric pressure has dropped very much fast, in less than 24 hours.
This type of storm occurs in Buffalo “once in a generation,” according to the US National Weather Service.
In Chicago, where it was around -20C during the day on Friday, homeless charity Night Ministry expressed concern about the number of beds the city was providing, which it said it didn’t have enough.
“Some of the people we’re taking in now just became homeless this year,” Major Caleb Senn, chief of the Chicago Salvation Army, told AFP. Some are really scared. It is the first time that they are at the mercy of nature and have no place to go. »
PHOTO KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Fog rises over Lake Michigan in Chicago on Friday morning.
Canada is also facing this phenomenon, with extreme cold, storm and even snowstorm warnings being issued for much of the territory.
But in Toronto, freezing temperatures didn’t deter Jennifer Campbell, who came downtown to do some last-minute Christmas shopping.
“We have regular big storms and we adapt,” said this Ontario tourist. We’re Canadians, it’s our way. »