An strong winter storm brought danger and suffering to millions of Americans on Christmas Day. As heavy snow and bitter temperatures seized areas of the Eastern United States on Sunday, the number of fatalities that may be attributed to the weather increased to at least 32.
An emergency situation developed in Buffalo, which is located in western New York. A blizzard had trapped the city, and emergency personnel were unable to reach the sections that were affected the worst by the storm.
“It is like travelling to a war zone, and the automobiles by the sides of the roadways are horrifying,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who is originally from Buffalo, a city where snow drifts as high as eight feet (2.4 metres) and power outages have created potentially fatal circumstances.
Hochul encouraged anybody in the region to stay inside and cautioned the press on Sunday evening that locals were still in the midst of a “very serious life-threatening scenario.”
More than 200,000 people in many eastern states awoke on Christmas morning without electricity, and many more had their holiday travel plans disrupted. This occurred despite the fact that the five-day-long storm, which included blizzard conditions and fierce winds, showed indications of lessening.
As a result of the severe weather over the weekend, wind chill temperatures dropped below freezing in all 48 contiguous states of the United States. This left holiday visitors stuck as hundreds of flights were cancelled, and people were confined inside their ice- and snow-covered houses.
It has been proven that 32 people have died as a direct result of the weather in nine different states. At least 13 of these fatalities have occurred in Erie County, which is where Buffalo is situated; however, authorities warn that this figure is likely to climb.
Officials described circumstances in the snow-prone Buffalo area as being historically perilous, with whiteouts lasting for hours and corpses being found in cars and behind snow banks as emergency officials battled to hunt for those who needed to be rescued.
The city’s international airport will stay closed until Tuesday, and a driving prohibition will continue to be enforced across the whole of Erie County.
Hochul stated that “we now have what’ll be talked about not just today but for generations the blizzard of ’22,” adding that the brutality had surpassed the region’s prior landmark snowstorm of 1977 in “intensity, the longevity, and the ferocity of the winds.” The blizzard of ’22 is expected to be remembered for generations to come.
It was anticipated that some people would not restore power until Tuesday due to frozen electric substations. According to a senior county official, one frozen substation was allegedly buried under 18 feet of snow. Some households were not expecting to receive power until Tuesday.
These current conditions are really terrible
The National Weather Service issued a blizzard watch for the Great Lakes region of western New York on Sunday, predicting “further snow accumulations of 2 to 3 feet through tonight” as a result of the lake-effect precipitation that was continuing to generate blizzard conditions in the area.
Because the roads are entirely impassable, a couple in Buffalo, New York, which is just over the border from Canada, told AFP on Saturday that they would not be making the 10-minute journey to visit their family for Christmas because of the storm.
Rebecca Bortolin, who is 40 years old, stated that it is difficult since the circumstances are simply so horrible. A lot of fire departments aren’t even sending out vehicles for calls due of the weather.
Travel became a living nightmare for millions of people all around the world.
According to the tracking website Flightaware.com, the storm, which was one of the fiercest in decades, caused the cancellation of nearly 3,000 flights in the United States on Sunday. This is in addition to approximately 3,500 flights being scrapped on Saturday and nearly 6,000 flights being scrapped on Friday.
Airports around the country, including those in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, and New York, continued to see significant backlogs of passengers throughout Christmas Day.
Road ice and white-out conditions were additional factors that contributed to the temporary closure of several of the biggest transportation arteries in the country, including the interstate that travels throughout the country.
Even though the United States has reached what is often the busiest travel season of the year, drivers were being strongly discouraged against taking to the roadways.
The severe weather has placed a significant strain on the nation’s power networks, prompting numerous electrical companies to urge millions of customers to cut their use in order to prevent rolling blackouts in states like North Carolina and Tennessee.
According to the tracker poweroutage.us, there were around 1.7 million consumers who were without electricity at one time on Saturday. The weather was very cold.
The number reduced significantly by Sunday night, but more than 48,000 consumers in eastern states were still without power. The outages were caused by severe weather.
A bus rollover that occurred on Saturday in British Columbia, Canada, is thought to have been caused by icy roads. The accident resulted in the deaths of four people and the hospitalisation of 53 others, including two individuals who were still in critical condition as of early Sunday.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Ontario and Quebec were left without electricity, several flights were cancelled in major cities, and passenger rail service between Toronto and Ottawa was interrupted as a result of the storm.