More than 1.1 million customers in 24 states are without power, including in Texas, New York and hardest-hit North Carolina.
By Brian K. Sullivan Bloomberg News
An enormous winter storm is battering a vast swath of the U.S. and Canada, knocking out power to more than 1 million homes and businesses, grounding thousands of flights, coating roads with ice and dashing hopes for delivery of last-minute holiday gifts.
More than 1.1 million customers in 24 states are without power, including in Texas, New York and hardest-hit North Carolina, where more than 165,000 homes and businesses are in the dark, according to PowerOutage.us. Upward of 6,600 flights out of and around the U.S. are cancelled as of 11 a.m. New York time, according to airline tracking service FlightAware.
While it’s packing plenty of snow and frigid temperatures, the storm is mostly noteworthy for its size and speed. Snow, blizzard, freezes and flood warnings and advisories stretch across the central and eastern portions of the country, the northern fringe and the Deep South. It’s speedy march across the continent, meanwhile, is causing violent temperature swings. New York City was 55F at dawn. By 10 p.m., it’s forecast to be around 10.
More than 200 million people — around 60% of the country — were under some form of winter weather warning or advisory Friday, according to the National Weather Service. Heavy snow is set to blanket the Great Lakes region and parts of northern New York and New England, with bitter cold following a front that’s now pushing into Pennsylvania and the Appalachian Mountains.
“It’s a pretty significant storm and is so widespread,” said Rich Otto, a forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. “This is a once in a 20- to 30-year type storm.”
The storm has intensified while sweeping east to achieve the status of a “bomb cyclone” — when its central pressure rapidly plunges — and is now centred over southwestern Ontario in Canada. Canadians are dealing with their own travel woes and power outages due to the severe weather, including cancelled flights in the country’s busiest airports.
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