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Due to the storm, weather-related traffic accidents are increasing in the USA
Photo Credit: IMAGO/Mark Vancleave/ IMAGO/ZUMA Wire
Large parts of the USA are experiencing an exceptionally cold Christmas.
A winter storm not only brought heavy snowfalls and icy winds, but also temperatures of up to minus 40 degrees Celsius.
The weather service predicted the coldest Christmas Eve ever for several cities from Pennsylvania in the northeast of the country to Georgia in the south.
According to the weather service, a total of around 240 million people were affected by weather warnings from the Canadian to the Mexican border and from coast to coast.
The number of deaths rose to 17 on Saturday night, as reported by the NBC broadcaster, citing local authorities.
Numerous weather-related traffic accidents
In almost all cases, the cause is weather-related traffic accidents.
Other broadcasters also reported a double-digit number of fatalities in connection with weather-related traffic accidents.
According to the US weather service, the region around the five Great Lakes (“Great Lakes”) in the north-east of the country on the border with Canada was particularly hard hit. On Saturday the storm shifted to the east of the country.
The storm also resulted in numerous power blackouts.
On Saturday morning, more than 1.6 million households were temporarily without electricity, as the PowerOutag e website showed.
There were power outages, especially on the east coast.
The Arctic cold front also messed up the Christmas plans of many travelers: According to the flight data website FlightAware, a total of almost 6,000 flights were canceled on Friday, and almost 2,000 on Saturday morning.
overload of emergency services
New York, with its approximately eight million inhabitants, experienced a rare drop in temperature on Friday: within just a few hours, the thermometer fell from plus 11 to minus 12 degrees.
In Erie County, south of the Great Lakes in upstate New York, emergency services were at times overwhelmed.
Marc Poloncarz, the person responsible for the district, called on Twitter to only call the emergency number in the “most critical, life-threatening cases” in order to keep the lines free.
He urged residents to stay in their homes despite power and heating outages.
Transport to emergency shelters is currently almost impossible.
The weather service called on travelers to exercise extreme caution on the Christmas weekend and warned of so-called whiteout conditions, i.e. severely restricted visibility and orientation due to the snow.
Traveling under these conditions is "extremely dangerous and at times impossible".
Even a few minutes in the cold could lead to frostbite.
A sports reporter from the local broadcaster KWWL achieved nationwide fame when he was unceremoniously assigned as a weather reporter for reporting from the freezing cold of Iowa in the Midwest on Thursday.
With each live switch, Mark Woodley grew more sullen.
When the presenter asked how he was feeling outside, Woodley replied, "Same as eight minutes ago when you asked me that before."
Woodley used his gearshift throughout the morning to voice his displeasure: What better reason to ask the sportscaster to come five hours earlier than he would normally wake up, faced with the wind, the snow, and the cold and tell other people not to do the same?” He said he didn't even know there was a 3:30 a.m. until that day.
Weather experts warn of "bomb cyclone"
US media, citing weather experts, warned of the possible emergence of a special and severe storm, a so-called "bomb cyclone" - a weather phenomenon in which the air pressure drops extremely within a short period of time and increases the force of the storm.
Temperatures of minus 45 degrees Celsius had already been measured on the day before Christmas in the states of Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming.
According to meteorologists, temperatures in Denver, Colorado, fell by around 40 degrees within 24 hours as the Arctic cold front passed through.
tfb/dpa/Reuters
