Winter storm kills US and poses ‘life-threatening danger’ to travelers

Across the country, officials have traced at least a dozen deaths to exposure, freezing car crashes and other effects of the storm, including two people who died at their homes outside of Buffalo, New York, when rescue workers were unable to reach them amid historic snowstorm conditions.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Saturday that Buffalo Niagara International Airport will be closed through Monday morning, some roads will be closed through Christmas Day and almost every fire engine in Buffalo is stranded in the snow.

“No matter how many emergency vehicles we have, they cannot survive the conditions as we speak,” Hochul said.

Blinding snowstorms, freezing rain and freezing cold also cut power from Maine to Seattle, while a major electric grid operator warned the 65 million people it serves in the eastern United States that continuous power outages could occur.

Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection said power plants are struggling to operate in the cold weather and urged residents of 13 states to ditch unnecessary electricity use. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies electricity to 10 million people in Tennessee and parts of six surrounding states, on Saturday directed local electric utilities to implement planned outages to “ensure the reliability of the power system.”

Chris Muenks said he and his cats woke up Saturday morning to a cold house in Greeneville, Tennessee. The power came back on, he said, only to go out again mid-morning during a planned power outage.

“I am disappointed with my power grid. It feels like a kick in the stomach,” said Muenks. “I understand storms and I understand wind, but I don’t understand ‘I don’t have enough strength’.”

Nearly 400,000 electricity customers were left without power in the six New England states as of Saturday morning, with some utilities warning it could take days to restore power. In North Carolina, nearly 370,000 customers were without power, according to poweroutage.us. PJM Interconnection – which covers all or portions of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, DC – also warned that rolling blackouts would be required could be.

In Cheektowaga, a Buffalo suburb, two people died at their homes on Friday when emergency responders could not reach them in time to treat their medical emergencies, according to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

“This could turn out to be the worst storm in our community’s history,” Poloncarz said Saturday morning. “There are probably still hundreds of people stuck in vehicles.”

Poloncarz said there is no emergency service in Buffalo and several surrounding populous communities because so many emergency vehicles are snowed in. He said a doctor had to guide a woman and her pregnant sister through the birth of the sister’s baby.

“That doesn’t mean that attempts won’t be made, but there is no guarantee that they will be able to respond immediately in a life-threatening emergency situation,” Poloncarz said.

Hochul late Friday announced plans to deploy 54 National Guard members to the area.

Four died in a massive pile-up involving around 50 vehicles on the Ohio Turnpike. A Kansas City, Missouri driver was killed Thursday after sliding into a creek and three others died in separate accidents on icy roads in northern Kansas on Wednesday.

A woman in Vermont died at a hospital Friday after a tree fell in high winds and fell on her. Colorado Springs police said they found the body of a person who appeared homeless as sub-zero temperatures and snow fell across the region.

Added to this were power outages that were still affecting more than 1.7 million homes and businesses as of early Saturday, according to website PowerOutage, which tracks reports from utilities.

The storm was nearly unprecedented in magnitude, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60% of the U.S. population faced some type of winter weather alert or warning, and temperatures dropped drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachian Mountains, the National Weather Service said.

Freezing rain blanketed much of the Pacific Northwest with a sheet of ice, while people in the Northeast faced the threat of coastal and inland flooding.

Cold temperatures and gusty winds this holiday weekend were expected to “create dangerously cold wind chills across much of the central and eastern US,” the weather service said, adding that the conditions will “pose a potentially life-threatening hazard to travelers who are traveling.” will be stranded.”

With millions of Americans traveling ahead of Christmas, more than 5,700 flights within, to or from the United States were canceled as of Friday, according to tracking site FlightAware. While in Mexico, migrants camped near the US border in unseasonably cold temperatures while awaiting a US Supreme Court decision on pandemic-era restrictions preventing many from seeking asylum.

Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very rapidly in a strong storm — was developing near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions including strong winds and snow.

Even the people of Florida braced for unseasonably cold weather as rare freeze warnings were issued for much of the state over the bank holiday weekend.

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Bleiberg reported from Dallas. Associated Press Writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Corey Williams of Southfield, Mich.; John Raby of Charleston, West Virginia; Maysoon Khan in Albany, New York; and Hannah Schoenbaum of Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.