A freezing winter storm has killed at least 18 people as it swept across the country, blacking out hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses and leaving millions worried about the potential for overnight power outages. Christmas.
The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, New York, with hurricane-force winds causing power outages. Emergency response efforts have been crippled and the city’s international airport has been closed.
Across the United States, officials attributed the deaths to sun exposure, car crashes, fallen tree branches and other effects of the storm. At least three people died in the Buffalo area, two of whom were treated at home and could not be saved because emergency crews were unable to reach them during historic snowstorm conditions.
Heavy snow, single-digit temperatures and all-day power outages sent Buffalo residents scrambling on Saturday to get out of their homes to wherever the heat was. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Buffalo Niagara International Airport will be closed until Monday morning and almost every fire truck in the city is stuck in the snow.
Hochul said: “No matter how many emergency vehicles we have, they cannot overcome the conditions as we say.
Cloudy blizzards, freezing rain and freezing cold also cut power in places from Maine to Seattle, while a major grid operator warned the 65 million people it serves across the eastern United States. States that there may be intermittent power outages.
Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection says power plants are having a hard time operating in the cold weather and has asked residents in 13 states to save electricity until at least Christmas morning. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies electricity to 10 million people in the state and part of six surrounding people, directed local power companies to implement planned disruptions but ended this measure on Saturday afternoon. The start of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans game in Nashville was delayed by an hour due to a planned power outage.
Across six New England states, more than 273,000 customers remained without power on Saturday, with Maine being the hardest hit and some utilities saying it could take days before power returned.
In North Carolina, 169,000 customers lost power in the afternoon, down from a peak of more than 485,000, but utility officials said the rotating outage would continue for the “next few days.”
Those without electricity included James Reynolds of Greensboro, who said his housemate, a 70-year-old with diabetes and severe arthritis, spent the morning next to a kerosene heater with temperatures in home “up to 50 degrees Celsius”.
In the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga, two people died at their home on Friday when emergency crews were unable to reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, according to Mark Poloncarz, CEO of Erie County. He said another person died in Buffalo and said the blizzard could be “the worst storm in the history of our community.”
Poloncarz said it took the ambulance more than three hours to make a trip to the hospital.
Forecasters say 28 inches (71 centimeters) of snow as of Saturday in Buffalo. Last month, areas south of the city saw a record 6 feet (about 1.8 meters) of snow after just one storm.
The latest storm knocked out the fireplace in the Buffalo home of Brian LaPrade, who woke up Saturday morning to the temperature in his home below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius).
“I had to go out and dig a vent,” LaPrade said. “That’s right, the snow is higher than my snow blower.”
Plows are already on the road, but heavy snowfall, abandoned cars and downed power lines are slowing progress.
On the Ohio Turnpike, four people died in a pile that involved about 50 vehicles. A motorist in Kansas City, Missouri, was killed Thursday after sliding into a creek, and three others died Wednesday in separate collisions on icy roads in northern Kansas.
According to the Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative, an Ohio electrician also died Friday while trying to restore power. It said the 22-year-old died in an “electrical incident” near Pedro in Lawrence County.
A Vermont woman died in hospital Friday after a tree snapped in high winds and fell on her. Police in Colorado Springs say they found the body of a person who appeared to be homeless as temperatures were below zero and snow was falling in the area. Near Janesville, Wisconsin, a 57-year-old woman died Friday after falling into a glacier through the ice, the Rock County Sheriff’s Office announced.
Along Interstate 71 in Kentucky, Terry Henderson and her husband, Rick, were stuck for 34 hours in a severe traffic jam due to several crashes. The truckers passed the waiting time in a rig equipped with diesel heaters, toilets and refrigerators but nonetheless regretted trying to drive from Alabama to their home near Akron, Ohio. to celebrate Christmas.
“We should have stayed,” said Terry Henderson after they moved again on Saturday.
The storm had a near-unprecedented scope, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60% of the U.S. population faces some kind of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummet below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to Appalachia, the National Weather Service says. know.
As millions of Americans travel before Christmas, more than 2,360 flights in, into or out of the United States were canceled on Saturday, according to tracking site FlightAware.
In Mexico, Migrants camp near the US border are facing unusually cold temperatures as they await a US Supreme Court ruling on pandemic-era restrictions that have prevented many people from applying for asylum.
Forecasters say a tornado bomb — when barometric pressure drops rapidly during a strong storm — developed near the Great Lakes, causing blizzard conditions, including high winds and snow.
Western New York often sees dramatic lake-effect snow, as cool air draws moisture from warm water, which then dumps it into the ground. But even residents in the area found Christmas Eve conditions dire.
Latricia Stroud and her two daughters, 1 and 12, have been trapped in their Buffalo home without heat or electricity since Friday afternoon, due to the snow falling too deep to leave.
“I had to cross a snowdrift to get out,” Stroud told the AP. “There’s a central heating, I just need to ride there.”
