Thousands of flights across the US have been cancelled for the weekend as a powerful winter storm makes its way across at least two-thirds of the eastern part of the country, affecting nearly 140 million people, or more than 40 per cent of the US population.
Warnings were issued from New Mexico to New England as the monster winter storm Fern wreaked havoc on Saturday, knocking out power and dumping dangerous ice on major roadways. The National Weather Service forecast widespread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain from Saturday to Monday, and quite possibly well into the coming week.
“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,” said Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
After sweeping through the South, the storm was expected to move into the Northeast, dumping about 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimetres) of snow from Washington through New York and Boston, the weather service predicted.
President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come.
Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states. “We just ask that everyone would be smart – stay home if possible,” Noem said.
New Jersey Gov, Mikie Sherrill, said Saturday while announcing restrictions on commercial vehicle travel and a 35 mph (56 kph) speed limit on highways that they are “expecting a storm the likes of which we haven’t seen in years”. “It’s a good weekend to stay indoors,” she said.
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Meanwhile, around 120,000 power outages were reported in the path of the winter storm Saturday, including about 50,000 each in Texas and Louisiana, according to poweroutage.us. Forecasters say the damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival that of a hurricane.
“We have hundreds of trees down and a lot of limbs in the road,” Shelby County Commissioner, Stevie Smith, said from his pickup truck, adding that “it’s a lot to deal with right now”. About a third of the county’s 16,000 residents lost power Saturday.
Air travel was also hit hard by the storm, with about 13,000 flights cancelled Saturday and Sunday across the US, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a major hub, saw more than 700 departing flights cancelled on Saturday and nearly as many arriving flights called off. Disruptions were also piling up at airports in Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Josh Weiss, a meteorologist at NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center, said the storm is unusual because of its wide area of affect and its nature. “I think there are two parts of this storm that make it unique. One is just a broad expanse of spatial coverage of this event ... You’ve got 2,000 miles of country that’s being impacted by the storm with snow, sleet, and freezing rain,” he said.
Officials in Georgia advised people in the state’s northern regions to get off the roads by sundown Saturday and be prepared to stay put for at least 48 hours as crews began treating highways with brine after midnight Saturday. Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner, Russell McMurry, said there were 1,800 workers on 12-hour shifts.
“We’re going to do what we can to keep the ice from sticking to the roads,” McMurry said. “This is going to be a challenge.”
“Please, if you can avoid it, do not drive, do not travel, do not do anything that can potentially place you or your loved ones in danger,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Saturday. “Instead, I urge every New Yorker who can to put a warm sweater on, turn on the TV, watch Mission Impossible' for the 10th time, above all to stay inside.”
The Midwest saw windchills as low as minus 40 F (minus 40 C), meaning that frostbite could set in within 10 minutes. The minus 36 F (minus 38 C) reading in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, on Saturday morning was the coldest in almost 30 years.
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