Heavy winter storm keeps USA in suspense at Christmas

– Many people in the US want to spend Christmas with their loved ones. But a violent winter storm thwarts travel plans in many places. For some, the extreme temperatures are deadly.

A winter storm with heavy snowfall, freezing winds and extreme cold is gripping large parts of the USA. The number of deaths rose to 17 on Saturday night (local time), as reported by the NBC broadcaster, citing local authorities. In almost all cases, the cause is weather-related traffic accidents.

Other broadcasters also reported a double-digit number of fatalities in connection with weather-related traffic accidents. According to the US weather service, the region around the five Great Lakes (“Great Lakes”) in the north-east of the country on the border with Canada is currently particularly badly affected.

In Erie County, south of the Great Lakes in upstate New York, emergency services were at times overwhelmed. Marc Poloncarz, the person responsible for the district, called on Twitter to only call the emergency number in the “most critical, life-threatening cases” in order to keep the lines free. He urged residents to stay in their homes despite power and heating outages. Transport to emergency shelters is currently almost impossible.

Severe weather warnings ahead of the Christmas weekend

The US weather service called on travelers to exercise extreme caution on the Christmas weekend and warned of so-called whiteout conditions, i.e. severely restricted visibility and orientation due to the snow. Traveling under these conditions is “extremely dangerous and at times impossible,” it said. There was also a warning regarding the low temperatures. In the state of Montana, minus 40 degrees Celsius were measured early on Saturday morning. It was said that even a few minutes in the cold might lead to frostbite.

Before the Christmas weekend, more than 200 million people had received severe weather warnings because of the storm “Elliot”. The north and midwest of the USA were the first to be affected. But there were also warnings of extreme frost in states in the south of the country. On the night of Christmas Eve, the storm shifted more to the eastern part of the country. Several states, including New York, have declared a state of emergency. “Mother Nature is demanding everything she has to offer this weekend,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Minus 45 degrees Celsius

As of Saturday morning (local time), more than 700,000 homes were still without power, according to the PowerOutage website. The Arctic cold front also messed up the Christmas plans of many travelers: According to the flight data website FlightAware, almost 6,000 flights were canceled on Friday, and on Saturday morning there were already more than 1,500. Above all, passengers in the north, around the Great Lakes, had to travel cancel. The airports in Chicago and Detroit are among the most important hubs in the country.

US media, citing weather experts, warned of the possible emergence of a special and severe storm, a so-called “bomb cyclone” – a weather phenomenon in which the air pressure drops extremely within a short time and increases the force of the storm. Temperatures of minus 45 degrees Celsius had already been measured on the day before Christmas in the states of Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming. According to meteorologists, temperatures in Denver, Colorado, fell by around 40 degrees within 24 hours as the Arctic cold front passed through.