- Travel for millions of Americans has been disrupted as an arctic blast ripples across the country.
- Extreme weather has prompted authorities in the Midwest to open warming centers, after at least five people died.
- People have been urged to stay home as deaths from the weather rise.
Arctic cold extended its grip over much of the United States on Friday, combining with the snow, ice and howling winds of a deadly winter storm raging from the Midwest to disrupt power supplies and thwart travel for millions. of Americans before the holiday weekend.
Extreme winter weather, which prompted city officials across the country to open warming centers at libraries and police stations as they struggled to expand temporary homeless shelters, was responsible for at least five deaths Friday.
A 50-vehicle collision on the Ohio Turnpike in a blizzard near Toledo killed two motorists, injured many others and closed both lanes of the highway, state police said.
The stranded motorists were evacuated by bus to prevent them from freezing in their cars in sub-zero temperatures, according to the Toledo Fire and Rescue Department.
Three weather-related deaths have been confirmed in neighboring Kentucky: two from car accidents and one homeless person who died from exposure.
“Please stay home and stay safe,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said on Twitter, announcing the deaths.
With the frost stretching from Montana to Texas as it moves east, some 240 million people, more than two-thirds of the US population, were under winter weather warnings and advisories Friday, the government said. National Weather Service (NWS).
The map of existing or impending winter hazards “represents one of the largest outreaches of winter weather warnings and advisories in history,” the NWS said.
‘I guess it’s cold outside’
The coldest place in the nation on Friday was the remote northern Montana town of Havre near the Canadian border, where the mercury had risen from a low of 38 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 39 C) to minus 20 just before noon, the NWS reported.
“It’s been colder, but yeah, I guess it’s cold outside,” Tyler Schaub, the manager of Rod’s Drive Inn, conceded as he flipped burgers on the grill.
“We’re used to it, but still it’s better not to stay outside for too long.”
Numbing cold intensified by strong winds swept across the deep South to the US-Mexico border, plunging wind chill factors to single digits Fahrenheit (minus 18 to minus 13 degrees Celsius) in the border city from El Paso, Texas. Exposure to such conditions can cause frostbite in a matter of minutes.
Severe frost warnings were posted for southern Georgia and much of the four Gulf Coast states: Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida.
Farther north, the storm system produced blinding snow from the northern Plains and Great Lakes to the upper Mississippi Valley, Ohio Valley, western New York state, and the Appalachian mountains of northern and central.
The storm front moved toward New England, where wind-driven swell caused coastal flooding.
Shelter, energy, flights
The extreme weather has added to a humanitarian crisis in many cities facing an influx of migrants who have crossed the southern US border by the thousands in recent weeks and lack permanent shelter. Their plight has added to local agencies scrambling to get people off the streets when the Arctic blast hit.
The domestic routines and vacation plans of ordinary Americans were also disrupted a few days before Christmas.
With the nation’s power systems under strain from rising heat demand and storm-related damage to transmission lines, up to 1.5 million US homes and businesses were without power last week. Friday, according to the monitoring site Poweroutage.us.
Heating and power prices soared as inclement weather forced cuts in power production and bitter cold caused demand to surge.
Strong winds, ice and snow disrupted commercial air traffic during one of the busiest periods of the year.
More than 5,200 US flights were canceled Friday, according to the FlightAware flight tracking service. Nearly 700 flights to or from Seattle’s main airport were canceled as a separate storm system brought ice and freezing rain to the Pacific Northwest.
Detroit Fire Department firefighters attempt to remove ice from their fire hoses as they battle a warehouse fire on December 23, 2022. A major winter storm ripped through much of the Midwest Friday, dropping temperatures to a single digit and wind chill down to -35 degrees Fahrenheit. (Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images/AFP Matthew Hatcher/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/Getty Images via AFP)
The American Automobile Association (AAA) had estimated that 112.7 million people planned to travel 50 miles (80 km) or more from home between Friday and January 2. That number is likely to drop due to treacherous weather that complicates air and road travel over the weekend.
The city of Buffalo and its surrounding county on the edge of Lake Erie in western New York imposed a driving ban, and the three Buffalo-area border bridges were closed to inbound traffic from Canada due to weather.
“If there’s any good news, it’s that the storm has moved quickly over some areas,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told MSNBC on Friday.
Last-minute holiday gift purchases may also have little chance of reaching their destinations at Christmas.
FedEx, United Parcel Service, the US Postal Service and Amazon.com alerted customers that severe weather was disrupting key operations in Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, the Dakotas and other areas affected by the bitter cold. and the blizzards.
Forecasters said the massive storm over the Midwest had materialized into a “bomb cyclone,” a phenomenon caused by a sharp and rapid drop in air pressure that forms a kind of cold-weather hurricane.
While some areas downwind of the Great Lakes received a foot or more of snow Friday, “the big news wasn’t so much the snow that was falling as it was the snow that was blowing,” said weather service meteorologist Brian Hurley.
