The storms and freezing temperatures affected everything from air travel to NFL playoff games and resulted in the deaths of several people around the country.
Arctic Freeze: A major part of the United States of America (USA) is still reeling under severe cold wave conditions as the Arctic Freeze/Arctic Blast continues to blast huge swaths of the country with sub-zero temperatures.
According to the news agency AP, “Dangerously cold temperatures affected much of the Rockies, Great Plains, and Midwest on Tuesday, with wind chills below minus 30 degrees (minus 34.4 Celsius) in many parts of the central US”.
It also reported that more than 85,000 American homes and businesses were without power on early Tuesday, with a bulk of them in Oregon after widespread outages that started on Saturday. Meanwhile, Portland General Electric has warned that the threat of freezing rain on Tuesday could delay restoration efforts and the transportation officials urged residents to avoid travel as roads were expected to be hazardously slick with ice that could weigh down trees and power lines, causing them to fall.
The inclement weather has also affected the studies as classes were canceled on Tuesday for students in Portland and other major cities including Chicago, home to the nation’s fourth-largest public school district, Denver, Dallas, and Fort Worth, Texas.
The storms and freezing temperatures affected everything from air travel to NFL playoff games to Iowa’s presidential caucuses and resulted in the deaths of several people around the country.
At least four people in the Portland area died, including two people from suspected hypothermia. Another man was killed after a tree fell on his house and a woman died in a fire that spread from an open-flame stove after a tree fell onto an RV.
In Wisconsin, the deaths of three homeless people in the Milwaukee area were under investigation, with hypothermia the likely cause, officials said.
Freezing rain and sleet were expected to continue across portions of the Southeast into Tuesday morning. Winter storm warnings were in effect for Lawrence, Limestone, and Madison counties in Alabama and in Franklin County in Tennessee, southeast Arkansas, northeast Louisiana, and much of northern, central, and southwestern Mississippi.
On Monday night, temperatures dropped to as low as 10 degrees (minus 12.2 C) in Olive Branch, Mississippi, and Jackson, Tennessee.
Air travelers across the country experienced delays and cancellations. The flight tracking service FlightAware reported about 2,900 cancellations Monday within, into, or out of the United States.
The National Weather Service on Monday said wind chills were expected to push temperatures 30 degrees below zero from the Northern Rockies to northern Kansas and into Iowa while Arctic storms left at least four dead and knocked out electricity to tens of thousands in the Northwest, brought snow to the South and walloped the Northeast with blizzard conditions forcing the postponement of the Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Buffalo Bills NFL playoff game hosted in bone-chilling Buffalo, New York.
(With AP inputs)
