Washington, December 26 (EFE). — Nearly 50 people have died in the United States in recent days from the effects of Ice Storm Elliot, which has left much of the country with heavy snowfall and hurricane-force winds and has caused the cold Christmas season of recent decades.
The hardest-hit area is northwest New York state, where authorities raised the death toll from the storm to 27 on Monday. The bodies were found in homes, vehicles and on the street.
Accustomed to the cold, the city of Buffalo, New York, on the border with Canada, has been completely devastated by the snow and its airport remains closed.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said it was the “most devastating storm” on record in the area and urged citizens to avoid driving on the freeway.
With this new data, the local press has already put the number of Elliot deaths at around 50 in the United States, many of them trapped in vehicles on the streets.
In addition to New York, deaths from cold or accidents have also been recorded in the states of Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin, according to local media.
In Ohio, four people died and several were injured in a spectacular accident on a freeway in which about 50 vehicles were involved.
The storm’s range was nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande (Rio Grande) along the border with Mexico.
More than 200 million Americans, about 60% of the population, were faced with some form of winter weather advice or advice, with temperatures falling dramatically below normal from the Rocky Mountains in the east to the Appalachian Mountains.
“Much of the eastern United States will remain frozen Monday and a weakening trend will begin Tuesday,” the National Weather Service (NWS) reported Monday.
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The agency warned that it was still “dangerous” to travel by road in some areas due to snow, but predicted conditions would improve within a few days.
Elliot caused thousands of flight delays and the cancellation of 20% of flights on Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve as thousands of people tried to reunite with their families.
In several East Coast cities and even in the state of Florida, thermometers marked lows not seen since Christmas 1983.
New York City experienced a minimum temperature of 10.5C below zero on Christmas Day, something not seen since 1872.
Washington, the US capital, had its coldest Christmas since 1983, at 10 degrees below zero, and thermometers in Tampa, Florida dipped below zero, not since 1966.
(c) EFE Agency