Arctic cold extended its grip over much of the United States on Friday (Dec 23), combining with snow, ice and howling winds from a deadly winter storm roaring out of the Midwest to disrupt energy supplies and thwart travel for millions of Americans ahead of the holiday weekend.
The extreme winter weather, which prompted city authorities across the country to open warming centers in libraries and police stations while scrambling to expand temporary shelter for the homeless, was blamed for at least five deaths on Friday.
A 50-vehicle pileup on the Ohio Turnpike in a blizzard near Toledo killed two motorists, injured numerous others and shut down both lanes of the highway, state police reported.
Stranded motorists were evacuated by bus to keep them from freezing in their cars in sub-zero temperatures, according to the Toledo Fire & Rescue Department.
Three weather-related fatalities were confirmed in neighboring Kentucky – two from car accidents and one a homeless person who died of exposure.
“Please stay home and stay safe,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said on Twitter, announcing the deaths.
With the deep freeze stretching from Montana to Texas as it crept eastward, about 240 million people – more than two-thirds of the US population – were under winter weather warnings and advisories on Friday, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.
The map of existing or impending wintry hazards “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever,” the NWS said.
“I GUESS IT’S COLD OUT”
The nation’s coldest spot on Friday was the remote northern Montana town of Havre near the Canadian border, where the mercury had risen from a low of minus 39 degrees Celsius to minus 20 degrees Celsius just before noon, the NWS reported.
“It’s been colder, but yeah, I guess it’s cold out,” Tyler Schaub, the manager of Rod’s Drive Inn, acknowledged as he was flipping burgers on the grill. “We’re used to it, but even then it’s best not to stay outside too long.”
Farther north, the storm system produced blinding snow from the northern Plains and Great Lakes region to the upper Mississippi Valley, the Ohio Valley, western New York state and mountains of the northern and central Appalachians.
The storm front pushed into New England, where wind-driven surf caused coastal flooding.
The American Automobile Association (AAA) had estimated that 112.7 million people planned to travel 80km or more from home between Friday and Jan 2. That number was likely to drop due to treacherous weather complicating air and road travel going into the weekend.
Passenger railroad Amtrak has cancelled dozens of trains through Christmas, disrupting holiday travel for thousands.
Highways in the Midwest faced lengthy delays because of snowy weather or crashes and authorities in parts of Indiana, Michigan, New York and Ohio urged motorists to avoid nonessential travel.
The city of Buffalo and its surrounding county on the edge of Lake Erie in western New York imposed a driving ban, and all three Buffalo-area border crossing bridges were closed to inbound traffic from Canada due to the weather.
“If there’s any good news, it’s that the storm has moved quickly over some areas,” Buttigieg told MSNBC on Friday.
Last-minute holiday gift purchases may also have slim chances of reaching their destinations by Christmas.
FedEx, United Parcel Service, the US Postal Service and Amazon.com all alerted customers that severe weather was disrupting key operations in Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, the Dakotas and other areas hard-hit by bitter cold and blizzards.
Weather forecasters said the massive storm over the Midwest had materialised into a “bomb cyclone” – a phenomenon caused by a drastic, rapid drop in atmospheric pressure that forms a kind of cold-weather hurricane.
While some areas downwind from the Great Lakes received a foot or more of snow on Friday, “the big story wasn’t so much the falling snow but the blowing snow”, weather service meteorologist Brian Hurley said.
This content was originally published here.
