A winter storm of rare intensity swept across the United States on Friday (23), closing roads and airports in much of the country two days before Christmas.
“More than 240 million people (over 70% of the population) are affected by weather alerts,” the National Weather Service (NWS) said in its daily bulletin.
The weather conditions are very dangerous for circulation, the authorities have warned.
Millions of people are expected to hit the roads and hop on flights for the Christmas and New Year holidays. Travel volume this year marks a return to levels prior to the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Flightaware tracker recorded more than 3,290 canceled flights. The most affected airports are those in Seattle, New York, Detroit, Chicago and Denver.
As of Thursday, regarding 10% of flights had been cancelled, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.
“Several of the biggest air centers are being affected,” he added.
“Please take this storm extremely seriously,” urged President Joe Biden on Thursday. “I encourage everyone … to heed local warnings. Really.”
In the state of Oklahoma, two people died on the road on Thursday.
The American Automobile Association (AAA) estimated that more than 112 million people will travel more than 80 km between this Friday and Jan. 2, most of them in automobiles.
– Icy shores –
Several states have declared states of emergency, including New York, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Georgia and North Carolina.
The phenomenon extends “from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande (on the border with Mexico)”, and from the Pacific coast, in the northwest, to the Atlantic coast, in the east, point out American meteorologists.
The cause is a low pressure system, generated by a strong collision between two air masses: a very cold one from the Arctic and a tropical one, coming from the Gulf of Mexico.
A depression is a system of low atmospheric pressure. It often implies bad weather, as it causes updrafts that cause clouds and precipitation.
What makes the current case extraordinary is that the atmospheric pressure dropped very quickly, in less than 24 hours.
The weather forecast predicts temperatures as low as -40°C in the north of the country by noon on Friday and below zero on the Texas coast.
– Canada also affected –
Several cold records were broken: -53°C in western Canada; -38°C in Minnesota and further south, where temperatures tend to be milder at this time of year; -13°C in Dallas; and -8°C in Houston.
This system has caused heavy snowfall in the north of the country, especially in the Great Lakes region.
Nearly a million Americans were left without electricity this Friday morning, especially in southeastern states such as Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Connecticut, according to the specialized website Poweroutage.us.
In North Dakota, the main routes are closed “due to snow and wind, with areas of almost non-existent visibility and ice”, point out state authorities, who advise travelers not to take the road in these conditions.
Across the border, Canada is also bracing for “unusually low temperatures for the season”, with heavy snowfall and possible freezing rain in some areas.
Authorities encouraged Quebec residents, for example, to “prepare contingency plans and emergency kits containing clean water, food, medicine, a first-aid kit and a flashlight.”
The cold has led some people to accept the “boiling water challenge”: they post videos where they throw very hot water into the air to see it crystallize immediately.
AFP
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