Almost 1.5 million American households without electricity, thousands of canceled flights, blocked highways and some fatal accidents: In the USA, the beginning of the Christmas holidays have been disrupted by a winter storm of rare intensity since this Friday.
According to the US Weather Service (NWS) “historically” it caused heavy snowfall, icy gusts and temperatures down to -48 ° C in places. Freezing rain combined with snow is also expected in some states. More than 240 million people, or 70% of Americans, were hit by warnings or calls for caution around the country this Friday morning.
A nationwide storm
The storm was particularly impressive in its magnitude, stretching from the Canadian border in the north to the Mexican border in the south. 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. On the dark Friday night they were still a million.
The phenomenon is having serious implications for all traffic at a time when millions of Americans are flocking to the streets and airports during the holiday season. The specialist website Flightaware listed 5,500 canceled flights in the USA on Friday evening, with the airports in Seattle, New York, Chicago and Detroit in the north-east of the country being hardest hit.
Travel ban in certain regions
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.
In the state of New York, a travel ban was issued in Erie County. “We stay at home (…) I can’t see the other side of the street” because of the snow, said Jennifer Orlando, affected by this ban in the city of Hamburg. She was without power for about four hours, she said, after a car struck a power line not far from her home.
Temperatures overnight from Friday to Saturday in this state have been estimated to be between -20C and -10C for the most optimistic forecasts. Due to the wind, feelings can reach -30°C.
[Low Temperatures and Wind Chills]: We expect lows in the single digits to low teens tonight through early Saturday morning. Wind chills will be even lower and could be as low as 5 to 10 below zero. Wind chills closer to 15 below zero can occur in some inland locations. pic.twitter.com/KjVR3xoR93
— NWS New York NY (@NWSNewYorkNY) December 23, 2022
“People should stay home and not venture out on the streets,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear warned CNN. “Your family wants to see you 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 died on the street in Oklahoma, according to local authorities.
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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 after an accident involving nine semi-trucks.
A “cyclone bomb” in question
This storm of rare intensity is caused by a “cyclonic bomb”: a strong conflict between two air masses, one very cold from the Arctic and the other tropical from the Gulf of Mexico, exacerbated because the atmospheric pressure falls very quickly 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 over the number of beds the city said it said was insufficient.
“Some of the people we’re taking in now just became homeless this year,” said Maj. Caleb Senn, a Chicago Salvation Army official. “Some are really scared. This is the first time they are at the mercy of nature and have nowhere to go,” he said.