A potentially lethal winter storm is battering the eastern United States, bringing life to a standstill for millions from the Ohio Valley to New England. The intense weather system has brought heavy snow, treacherous ice and some of the coldest Arctic air to parts of the country east of the Rocky Mountains. The winter storm warnings now stretch across the eastern third of the country, affecting some 118 million people who will experience extended travel delays and hazardous conditions.
The scale of the cold was staggering, with 157 million Americans under a wind chill alert to prepare for temperatures as low as more than 40 degrees below zero near the Canadian border and the coldest air in a generation even in parts of the Deep South. Powerful winds have only made the dangerous circumstances more perilous, sending wind chill values in the northern Plains to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, weather that can cause exposed skin to freeze within minutes.
Gridlock in the Transportation Networks
The winter storm has shredded travel schedules nationwide, with airlines scrapping more than 11,000 flights for Sunday alone. Principals among airports in New York, Philadelphia, and Charlotte had at least 80 per cent cancellations of Sunday flights with Ronald Reagan National Airport just outside Washington appearing effectively closed down. The blanket cancellations have left thousands of travellers stranded on what is normally a busy travel weekend.
The roads were also equally treacherous as heavy snow turned to sleet and freezing rain in many parts of the mid-Atlantic. Since the storm began forming on Friday, some areas had received a foot or more of snow by Sunday evening, and especially heavy accumulations have fallen in sections of Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Governor Kathy Hochul of New York directed National Guard members to help with the response across New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley as conditions worsened.
Blacks, Left in the Dark, Are Hit Hardest by Power Outages
Heavy ice, coupled with strong winds, has led to a widespread power emergency across southern states such as Louisiana and Mississippi, where freezing rain coated trees and power lines with up to an inch of ice. At the height of the storm on Sunday, more than one million homes and businesses in eight states from Texas to the Carolinas were without power. Tennessee bore the brunt of the damage, with about a third of outages reported there, and as of Sunday evening, nearly 959,000 customers were still without power.
The slowly melting ice is a lingering threat even as the worst of the wintry mix heads out. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the situation is made even more difficult by the persistence of cold temperatures that will delay the melting of the ice. The weight of the accumulated ice on power lines still threatens more outages, even along portions of lines that have stayed intact so far. Street crews are fighting dangerous conditions as they try to clear roads, the shift from snow to freezing rain complicates and endangers their job.
Emergency Measures Across Multiple States
Government officials at various levels took action quickly because of the seriousness of the storm. President Donald Trump granted federal emergency disaster declarations for a dozen states, primarily across the mid-South on Wednesday and called the storm “historic.” Seventeen states and the District of Columbia also issued their own weather emergencies on Saturday to free up resources to protect residents and keep critical infrastructure functioning.
Fears of an energy crisis led the Department of Energy to issue emergency orders that officials said would help avert widespread blackouts. On Saturday, the agency authorised the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to “take action” by way of backing up large facilities including data centres. Another emergency order followed on Sunday for the mid-Atlantic states, enabling grid operator PJM Interconnection to run certain resources without regard to standard environmental permit constraints. Weather forecasters are warning that even as the storm system pulls away from the East Coast on Monday, additional Arctic air will rush in behind it, adding days to what is already a several-day episode of bitter cold and ice.
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