More than 11,000 flights in the United States have already been canceled due to a monstrous storm that began to wreak havoc across much of the country this Saturday (24), threatening to disrupt power supplies and cover major highways with ice.
About 140 million people, or more than 40% of the country’s population, are under a winter storm warning, from New Mexico to New England. The National Weather Service forecast warned of widespread heavy snowfall and a catastrophic ice storm from east Texas to North Carolina.
All flights this Saturday were canceled at Will Rogers International Airport, in Oklahoma City, and flights this Sunday morning (25) have also been suspended, with authorities planning to resume operations tomorrow afternoon at Oklahoma’s largest airport.
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Meteorologists say the damage, especially in areas affected by the ice, could be comparable to that caused by a hurricane. “Dangerously low temperatures and extremely low wind chills are spreading across the region and will remain so through Monday,” the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said.
Low temperatures will predominate over the next few nights, with wind chills reaching -24 degrees Celsius (-12 degrees Fahrenheit).
In the dark
More than 95,000 power outages were reported across the country on Saturday morning, about 36,000 of them in Texas and another 10,000 in Virginia.
Governors of at least 12 states issued warnings about approaching bad weather, declaring a state of emergency or recommending that residents stay at home.
As of 10 a.m. ET, more than 3,800 flights had been canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Almost 7 thousand flights scheduled for Sunday suffered the same fate.
After making landfall in the South, the storm is expected to move northeast, bringing about a foot of snow from Washington to New York and Boston, according to the National Weather Service.
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Temperatures reached -34C just before dawn in rural Lewis County and other parts of upstate New York after days of heavy snowfall.
With information from the Associated Press.
