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As millions of Americans flood streets and airports for the holiday season, the country awoke on Saturday to a historic snowstorm that caused massive damage: 1.5 million American homes without power, thousands of flights cancelled, highways closed and sometimes fatal accidents.
It is a phenomenon as rare as it is intense. In the aftermath of a day devastated by a rare winter storm, the United States is approaching the Christmas holidays, Saturday 24 December, in more than special conditions. In total, an estimated 1.5 million American homes were left without power on Friday and thousands of flights were canceled.
Down to -48°C in some places
Described as “historic” by the US Weather Service (NWS), the storm delivered heavy snowfalls, freezing squalls and temperatures that dropped as low as -48C in some spots, capable of turning water boiling in an instant in droplets of ice.
More than 240 million people, or 70 percent of Americans, were impacted by alerts or calls for caution in the United States on Friday morning.
The phenomenon has caused havoc in transportation. A shingle as millions of Americans take to the streets and airports for the holiday season.
A travel ban has been issued in New York State in Erie County. “Let’s stay at home (…) I can’t see across the street” because of the snow, said Jennifer Orlando, affected by this ban in the city of Hamburg.
After a vehicle hit a power line, she was without power for about four hours, she said.
Up to about 1.5 million homes were deprived of electricity on Friday, particularly in North Carolina, Maine and Virginia, according to Poweroutage.us. There were still a million in the dark on Friday night.
In El Paso, Texas, shelters have been opened so that migrants from Mexico can protect themselves from the risk of hypothermia in the freezing temperatures. But many are too suspicious to accept the offer and many of them “just sleep rolled up in blankets,” 56-year-old volunteer Rosa Falcon told reporters.
5,500 canceled flights
On Friday evening, the specialized site Flightaware listed 5,500 canceled flights in the United States, the most affected airports being those of Seattle, New York, Chicago or Detroit.
Several states have declared states of emergency, such as New York, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Georgia and North Carolina. With near-zero visibility, blizzard and frost affecting much of the country, the roads have become very dangerous
>> See also: In the pictures: the United States paralyzed before Christmas by a storm of rare intensity
“People should stay home, not venture out on the street,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear warned on 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 Kentucky roads. In Oklahoma, at least two people died on the road, according to the agency responsible for emergency management in that state.
In Ohio, a massive collision of about 50 vehicles on a highway has killed at least one person, according to local media reports. In Michigan, traffic on a highway was disrupted Friday morning due to an accident involving nine trailers.
“low pressure bomb”
This storm of rare intensity is caused by a “low pressure bomb”: a powerful conflict between two air masses, one very cold in the Arctic and the other tropical in the Gulf of Mexico, aggravated because the atmospheric pressure has dropped a lot quickly, in less than 24 hours.
This type of storm occurs “only once in a generation,” according to the U.S. National Weather Service in Buffalo.
Canada is also facing this phenomenon, with extreme cold, storm and even blizzard warnings being issued for most of the territory.
But in Toronto, freezing temperatures haven’t deterred Jennifer Campbell, who’s come to do some last-minute holiday shopping in the city center.
“We have big storms on a regular basis and we adjust,” this Ontario tourist evacuated. “We’re Canadian, it’s our way of doing it.”
With the AFP
