More than a million customers across the United States are without electricity and over 10,000 flights have been cancelled as a monster winter storm threatens to paralyse a large part of the country with heavy snowfall and freezing rain.
The storm is forecast to sweep the eastern two-thirds of the nation on Sunday and into the week, plummeting temperatures to below freezing and causing “dangerous travel and infrastructure impacts” to linger for several days, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.
As of Sunday, 1,005,641 customers were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us – most of them in Tennessee, while Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia and Alabama were also badly affected.
Heavy snow was forecast from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while “catastrophic ice accumulation” threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
“It is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,” said NWS meteorologist Allison Santorelli, adding that about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning.
“It was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we are talking like a 2,000-mile [3,220km] spread.”
Calling the storm “historic”, US President Donald Trump on Saturday approved federal emergency disaster declarations as nearly 20 states and the District of Columbia declared weather emergencies.
“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.
Credit: aljazeera.com
