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United States: the country still plunged into polar cold, millions of people without electricity

2021-02-18T11:28:48.392Z


The United States is still plunged into freezing cold, including the south of the country. Millions of people are deprived of electricity and


Millions of Americans were still without power on Wednesday following an intense cold spell that swept across large portions of the United States and is expected to last until the weekend.

The US National Weather Service (NWS) said Wednesday that more than 100 million Americans in the Midwest were affected by warnings of winter storms of varying severity.

Snow and ice is forecast for a broad swath of the US through Friday night.

Many of these areas have recently experienced significant impacts from wintry precipitation already this week.

Visit https://t.co/eh5HNSg8yq for tips on how to prepare and keep you and your family safe.

pic.twitter.com/izeNsCldzo

- National Weather Service (@NWS) February 17, 2021

The mass of cold air, coming from the Arctic, begins to emerge but temperatures remain freezing and should remain "between 11 and 19.5 ° C below seasonal norms" in the central part of the country, warn meteorologists.

This cold snap has already had terrible consequences.

More than thirty deaths linked to bad winter weather have been recorded across the country according to American media.

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The southern United States in the grip of a terrible cold snap

The situation is particularly chaotic in Texas, unaccustomed to this kind of weather.

The distress was notably visible, Wednesday, at Lakewood Church in Houston, the largest city in the state, where many residents had taken refuge to escape the cold.

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Among them, David Hernandez, 38, spent the night in the religious building after his vehicle broke down.

“I was trying to sleep in the car but it was just too cold.

All liquids turned into ice cubes so it was like sleeping in a freezer, ”he said.

“I had to come here, I had no choice.

"

Power cuts in several states

The bad weather and the cold did not spare the animals.

The Primarily Primates protection organization, based near San Antonio and without power since Monday, reported the deaths of 12 monkeys on Wednesday despite efforts by caregivers to try to keep the primates warm.

The electricity supplier in Austin, the state capital, said nearly 200,000 homes were without power and that the blackouts would last all day Wednesday "and potentially longer."

According to the site Poweroutage.us, which lists these incidents in the United States, more than 2.3 million homes and businesses in Texas remained without electricity as of Wednesday evening.

Over 2.5 million electric customers are without power across the USA.

As companies work to restore power generation in TX and a storm causes new outages in LA and MS.

Check out https://t.co/8cAFt3zGJe for #PowerOutage data!

[2021-02-17 10:07 PM EST] pic.twitter.com/hYlC3BsQwS

- PowerOutage.us (@PowerOutage_us) February 18, 2021

The energy companies have chained the partial cuts since this weekend, in order to avoid the overheating of the whole system due to peaks in demand.

The shortage was exacerbated by the shutdown of several gas-fired power plants and wind turbines due to freezing conditions.

Outside of Texas, residents were also deprived of electricity across Oregon (northwest), Louisiana (south), Mississippi (south), Kentucky (central-east), Ohio (north -est), West Virginia (east), and Virginia (east), according to poweroutage.us.

Snow record

Up to 73% of the United States (excluding Hawaii, Alaska and other non-mainland territories) was covered in snow overnight Tuesday through Wednesday, according to the NWS.

A record since the start of these measures in 2003.

And Texas, used to mild temperatures even in winter, was no exception: a six-inch-thick white coat covered the capital, Austin.

In record for more than 70 years.

More snowflakes could still fall in this state in the coming days, warned the Weather Service.

Texas, essentially entirely snow covered.

pic.twitter.com/uu27jeNoGO

- Dakota Smith (@weatherdak) February 15, 2021

This "spectacular cold snap that hit the continental United States is linked to the combination of an arctic high carrying freezing temperatures and a very active depression with waves of precipitation," the NWS explained on Monday.

The extreme conditions also caused the formation of several tornadoes, one of which hit the night of Monday to Tuesday in the southeastern United States, in North Carolina, killing three people and leaving ten injured.

Source: leparis

All news articles on 2021-02-18

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