Over a million homes without power, thousands of canceled flights, closed roads, and several fatal accidents: USA was preparing this Saturday to receive the Christmas the day after a day disrupted by a winter storm of unusual intensity.
“Historical” according to the American Weather Service (NWS), the storm that affects much of the country generated heavy snowfalls, ice gusts and temperatures that dropped to -48 ° C in some places, capable of transforming boiling water into ice droplets in an instant.
More than 240 million people, or 70% of Americans, were affected Friday by alerts or orders for caution in USA.
The phenomenon sparked transportation chaos as millions of Americans travel for the holidays.
In the state of NYa travel ban has been issued in Erie County.
“We stay at home (…) I can’t see across the street” because of the snow, Jennifer Orlando told AFP, in the city of Hambourg, south of Buffalo.
The accident of a vehicle against a power line left her without power for about four hours, she said.
Up to around 1.5 million homes were without power on Friday, especially in the states of North Carolina, Maine and Virginia, according to the specialized site Poweroutage.us. This Saturday more than a million users were still without electricity.
The storm affected from the border with Canada, in the north, to the border with Mexico, in the south.
In StepIn Texas, shelters were opened so that migrants arriving from Mexico could avoid hypothermia due to the freezing temperatures.
But many fear immigration authorities and “simply sleep wrapped in blankets,” Rosa Falcón, a 56-year-old school teacher and volunteer, told AFP.
Chaos in transport
On Friday night, the specialized site FlightAware registered 5,500 canceled flights in the United States. The most affected airports were those of Seattle, NY, Chicago y Detroit.
To get to Los Angeles, Christine Lerosen could not board from Vancouver, Canada, and had to persuade her brother to take her to Seattle, to catch another plane, with a layover in Denver.
“My flight from Seattle was delayed, my flight from Denver was delayed, and now they’ve lost my luggage,” he told ABC 7.
Several states declared a state of emergency, including New York, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Georgia, and North Carolina.
With visibility close to zero, blizzards and frost affecting much of the country, the roads have become very dangerous.
“People should stay home, not venture out on the roads,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear told CNN. “Their family wants to see them home for Christmas, but most of all they want to see them alive.”
Beshear confirmed that three people had been killed on Kentucky highways.
In Oklahoma, at least two people died on public roads, according to the agency in charge of emergency management in that state.
In Ohio, a massive collision of about 50 vehicles on a highway killed at least one person, according to local media.
In Michigan, traffic on a highway was disrupted mid-morning Friday due to an accident involving nine tractor-trailers.
“Bomb Cyclone”
This rare intensity storm is caused by a “low pressure bomb”: a 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 atmospheric pressure dropped very rapidly, in less than 24 hours.
This type of storm occurs “only once in a generation,” according to the NWS office in Buffalo.
In Chicagowhere the temperature was around -20°C during the day on Friday, homeless relief organization Night Ministry was concerned about the number of beds made available by the city, which it said was insufficient.
“Some of the people we’re receiving now were left homeless this year,” Caleb Senn, head of the Salvation Army charity in Chicago, told AFP.
“Some are really scared. This is the first time they have been at the mercy of bad weather with nowhere to go,” he added.
Canada it must also face this phenomenon, with warnings of extreme cold, storms and even blizzards issued for a large part of the territory.
But in Toronto, the frigid temperatures didn’t deter Jennifer Campbell from doing some last-minute Christmas shopping downtown.
“We have big storms regularly and we adapt,” said this tourist from Ontario. “We are Canadians, that’s how we live.”
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