Thousands of flights cancelled as major winter storm moves across the US
Thomas Peipert, Jeff Amy And Dave Collins
Updated ,first published
Oklahoma City: Thousands of flights across the United States were canceled on Sunday (Monday AEDT) as the severe storm dumped snow and freezing rain from the southern states to New England.
The storm caused frigid temperatures and rough roads across a 3,500-mile radius, including New York and Washington, D.C.
Ice and snowfall is expected to continue through Monday, followed by dangerously low temperatures causing “hazardous travel and infrastructure impacts” to last for several more days, the National Weather Service said.
Heavy snowfall was expected from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while “catastrophic ice accumulation” was threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
“This is a unique storm in that it is so widespread,” weather meteorologist Allison Santorelli said in a phone interview.
More than 10,000 flights had already been canceled Sunday, mostly in New York and Washington D.C., and another 8,000 were delayed, according to flight tracker Flightaware.com.
As of Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some type of winter weather warning, he said. According to Poweroutage.us, the number of customers without power was approaching 800,000 and the number was growing.
“The melting of snow and ice will be very, very slow and not going away anytime soon, which will hamper recovery efforts,” said Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
U.S. President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Federal Emergency Management Agency has prepositioned supplies, personnel and search and rescue teams in many states.
“We want everyone to be smart, stay home if they can,” Noem said.
While crews in some southern states began working to repair downed power lines on Saturday, officials in some eastern states issued final warnings to residents.
“We’re expecting a storm we haven’t seen in years,” New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill said Saturday as he announced restrictions on commercial vehicle travel and a 36 mph speed limit on highways. He added: “It’s a good weekend to stay inside.”
Power outages hit Louisiana and Texas
Forecasters say the damage, especially in areas hit by ice, could be equivalent to that of a hurricane.
According to Poweroutage.us, nearly 120,000 power outages were reported in the winter storm’s path Saturday; there were about 50,000 each in Texas and Louisiana.
In Shelby County, near Texas’ border with Louisiana, ice put pressure on pine trees, causing branches to snap and downed power lines. About a third of the county’s 16,000 electric customers lost power on Saturday.
“We have hundreds of trees down and there are a lot of branches on the roads,” Shelby County Commissioner Stevie Smith said from his pickup truck. “I sent my crew out to clear the roads as quickly as possible. There’s a lot to deal with right now.”
There were reports of vehicles hitting downed trees and trees falling on homes in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, where more than half of electric customers lost power.
“We have limbs dragging on the ground,” local sheriff’s spokesman Mark Pierce said. “These trees are completely saturated with ice.”
Planes were grounded
Nearly 13,000 flights were canceled across the U.S. on Saturday and Sunday, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. Sunday’s cancellations, which are still rising, were the highest number of cancellations on any day since the coronavirus pandemic, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
All flights Saturday at Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers International Airport were canceled and all flights Sunday morning were also canceled as officials aimed to restart service Sunday afternoon at Oklahoma’s largest airport.
At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a major hub, more than 700 departing flights were canceled Saturday and nearly as many arriving flights were canceled. Disruptions were also piling up at airports in Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville and Charlotte, North Carolina.
By late Saturday afternoon, nearly all departure flights scheduled to leave Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Sunday had been cancelled.
We’re preparing for the biggest ice storm of the decade
Authorities in Georgia advised people in the northern parts of the state to stay off the roads by sunset on Saturday and be prepared to remain sedentary for at least 48 hours.
Senior state meteorologist Will Lanxton said Georgia could experience “perhaps the biggest ice storm we’ve expected in over a decade” followed by unusually cold temperatures.
“Ice is a completely different ball game than snow,” Lanxton said. “You can’t do anything with ice. You can’t drive on it. It’s much more likely to bring down power lines and trees.”
Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry said crews began applying brine to highways after midnight Saturday (Sunday AEDT), with 1,800 workers working 12-hour shifts.
“We will do everything we can to keep ice from sticking to the roads,” McMurry said. “This will be a challenge.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced he would deploy 120 of the 120 members of the National Guard to northeast Georgia “to further strengthen our response in the hardest-hit areas,” after previously placing 500 National Guard members on standby.
After wreaking havoc on the South, the storm is expected to move toward the Northeast and drop more than 30 centimeters of snow, according to the weather service’s forecast.
“Please, if you can avoid it, don’t drive, don’t travel, don’t do anything that could endanger you or your loved ones,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. “Instead, I advise every New Yorker who can afford it to put on a warm sweater, turn on the TV, watch TV. Mission Impossible For the 10th time, above all else, to stay inside.”
Cold temperatures impact the Midwest and North
The Midwest saw wind chills as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius, meaning freezing could set in within 10 minutes. The minus 38C measured in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, on Saturday morning was the coldest temperature in almost 30 years.
The worst of the extreme cold wave in Minneapolis is over, but protesters demanding US Immigration and Customs Enforcement leave Minnesota on Saturday still faced outside temperatures of minus 21C.
Workers from The Orange Tent Project, a Chicago nonprofit that provides cold-weather tents and other supplies to homeless people in the city, went out to check on those who couldn’t seek or find shelter.
“When I saw the predicted weather, I knew we had to get out and do this today,” said CEO Morgan McLuckie.
Mardi Gras and classes were canceled. Opry performs without audience
Churches moved Sunday services online, and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, decided to hold its Saturday night radio performance without fans. Mardi Gras parades in Louisiana have been canceled or rescheduled.
School superintendents in Philadelphia and Houston announced that schools would close on Monday.
Some universities in the South canceled classes on Monday, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the main campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
In the Southeast, people used the cancellations to have some fun. On a hill outside the Capitol building in Nashville, adult sleds on green discs and inflatable pool animals giggled with delight as they slid through the snow.
Weather forecasters said the winter storm was unusual.
“I think there are two parts that make this storm unique. The first is just the broad spatial extent of this event… you’ve got 2,000 miles to go.” [3218km] “The other part that’s really impressive about this storm is what happens right after it. We’re looking at extreme cold, record cold,” said Josh Weiss, a meteorologist with NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center.
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