US storm cuts power to hundreds of thousands of homes and grounds flights | US weather
More than 700,000 households and businesses are without power in the US and more than 10,000 flights are expected to be canceled ahead of a massive winter storm that threatens to paralyze eastern states with heavy snowfall.
Snow, sleet, freezing rain and dangerously cold temperatures will ravage the eastern two-thirds of the country on Sunday and next week, forecasters said. Those warnings came after three people were found dead on the streets of New York City on Saturday afternoon “due to weather-related conditions” amid bitter cold, the local NBC affiliate said. reported.
“much [18] The National Weather Service (NWS) reported Sunday on the heavy snow and ice accumulation expected from the winter storm: “Up to 2.5 inches of freezing rain will fall in New England and 0.50 inches in parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Ohio/Tennessee Valleys. Heavy rain will also develop in the Lower Mississippi Valley on Sunday and parts of the Tennessee Valley on Monday.”
“In the wake of the storm, communities from the Southern Plains to the Northeast will contend with extremely cold temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills.”
Calling the storms “historic,” Donald Trump on Saturday approved federal emergency disaster declarations in South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana and West Virginia.
“We will continue to monitor and stay in touch with all states in the path of this storm. Stay Safe and Stay Warm,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have declared weather emergencies, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem warned people to take precautions at a news conference Saturday.
“It’s going to be very, very cold,” Noem said. “So we’re encouraging everyone to stock up on fuel, stock up on food, and we’ll get through this together.” He added: “We have utilities teams working to restore this as quickly as possible.”
The number of outages continued to increase. As of 6:30 a.m. EST (1130 GMT) Sunday, more than 700,000 U.S. customers were without power. Power Outage.us. Approximately 250,000 of these outages occurred in Tennessee, while more than 100,000 outages were reported in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
On Saturday, the Department of Energy issued an emergency order authorizing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to deploy backup generation resources at data centers and other large facilities to limit power outages in the state.
On Sunday, the department issued an emergency order authorizing grid operator PJM Interconnection to operate “certain resources” in the mid-Atlantic region regardless of limits imposed by state laws or environmental permits.
The National Weather Service warned that an unusually large and prolonged winter storm would lead to widespread, heavy ice accumulation in the Southeast, where “locally crippling impacts” could be expected.
Forecasters predicted record low temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills would descend on the Great Plains region by Monday.
More than 9,600 U.S. flights scheduled for Sunday were canceled and more than 4,000 were canceled on Saturday, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. There were more than 1,800 flight cancellations reported For Monday.
Up to 8 inches of sleet was reported in and around Little Rock, Arkansas, and ice accumulation of almost 3-quarter inches was reported. reported Southeast of Shreveport, near Hall Summit, Louisiana, the highest snowfall totals in New Mexico exceed a foot, according to the Weather Channel.
Leading US airlines warned passengers to be careful about sudden flight changes and cancellations. Delta Air Lines adjusted its schedule for Saturday, with additional morning cancellations in Atlanta and along the east coast, including Boston and New York City. The airline said it would relocate specialists from its cold weather centers to support de-icing and baggage teams at several southern airports.
JetBlue said that as of Saturday morning, nearly 1,000 flights had been canceled through Monday. United Airlines said it was canceling some flights in locations with the worst expected weather conditions.
US power grid operators stepped up measures to prevent rolling outages on Saturday. Dominion Energy, whose Virginia operations include the world’s largest collection of data centers, said the winter event could be one of the biggest to impact the company if the icy forecast comes true.
