A powerful winter storm has swept across large parts of the United States, killing at least seven people, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and disrupting travel nationwide.
Authorities say the storm has created “life-threatening” conditions stretching from Texas to New England, forcing widespread school closures, road shutdowns and mass flight cancellations. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain could persist for days, potentially affecting around 180 million Americans — more than half the country’s population.
“The snow and the ice will be very, very slow to melt and won’t be going away anytime soon, and that’s going to hinder any recovery efforts,” Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told the BBC’s US media partner CBS News.
As of Sunday afternoon, more than 800,000 households were without electricity, data from PowerOutage.us showed, while FlightAware reported over 11,000 cancelled flights. Emergency services across several states have been stretched as icy roads and extreme cold triggered hundreds of traffic accidents.
Louisiana’s Department of Health confirmed on Sunday that two men had died of hypothermia.
The mayor of Austin, Texas, said there had been an “exposure-related” death.
Officials in Kansas said a woman, whose body was found on Sunday afternoon covered in snow, “may have succumbed to hypothermia”.
Weather-related deaths of three people have also been reported in Tennessee.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote in a post on X that at least five people in the city had died on Saturday but added their cause of death was yet to be determined. He said, however, “It is a reminder that every year New Yorkers succumb to the cold”.
New York state Governor Kathy Hochul warned residents to stay inside and off roads. “This is certainly the coldest weather we’ve seen, the coldest winter storm we’ve seen in years,” she said on Sunday.
“A sort of an arctic siege has taken over our state and many other states across the nation.” Hochul said the “brutal” conditions were expected to bring the longest cold stretch and highest snow falls in years. “It is bone chilling and it is dangerous,” she said.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said on Sunday that the state was seeing more ice and less snow than was originally predicted. “That is not good news for Kentucky,” he said.
Meteorologists warn that freezing rain poses one of the greatest dangers, as it instantly coats surfaces with ice, damaging trees, bringing down power lines and making roads treacherous. In Virginia and Kentucky, officials have responded to hundreds of crashes linked to icy conditions.
In Washington DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a state of emergency, calling it the capital’s biggest snowstorm in a decade. Nearly half of all US states have issued emergency declarations, while the US Senate postponed a scheduled vote due to the severe weather. Schools across the country are already canceling classes in anticipation of the storm continuing into Monday.
While places in the north such as the Dakotas and Minnesota are used to below- freezing temperatures in winter, it is unusual to see such extreme cold in states like Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee, where temperatures are around 15-20C below the seasonal average. Those states could also see ice accretions of around an inch caused by freezing rain.
Canada has also been affected, with heavy snowfall and hundreds of flight cancellations reported. Officials in Ontario expect between 15 and 30 centimetres of snow.
The polar vortex – a ring of strong westerly winds that form above the Arctic every winter containing a pool of very cold air – led to the powerful storm, according to weather experts.
When the winds are strong, they stay in place, however when the winds weaken, the vortex loops further south and cold air plunges toward the US. As the cold air meets mild air in the south, the air rises and storm fronts form.
In this case, the winter storm is pushing northwards and eastwards, clearing the Canadian maritime by Tuesday but leaving more cold air in its wake. It is forecast to stay dangerously cold into the start of February.
Melissa Enoch
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