As I write this article, it is 8:18 AM eastern US time on December 24, Christmas Eve morning, and here in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania it is two degrees Fahrenheit, with wind chills making it feel like Minus fourteen degrees. BRRRRRRR! The "Polar Vortex made its grand arrival here yesterday.
The rest of the continental United States has been hit hard by this "Siberian Express" with heavy snow, high winds, power outages and auto accidents.
On Interstate 75 and the Ohio Turnpike near Sandusky, OH, yesterday, crashes involving 100 vehicles took place as roads iced-over and blowing snow brought visibility to almost zero.
Elsewhere, high winds took down trees, which took down electric wires, leaving thousands without electric power on one of the coldest days in decades.
More than a million US power customers were in the dark Friday as a “bomb cyclone” winter storm walloped the country, closing highways, grounding flights and causing misery for Christmas travelers.
Heavy snow, howling winds and air so frigid it instantly turned boiling water into ice took hold of much of the nation, including normally temperate southern states.
Over 200 million Americans were under weather warnings, as wind chills sent temperatures down as low as -55 Fahrenheit (-48 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
In Hamburg, New York, 39-year-old Jennifer Orlando hunkered down with her husband.
“I can’t see across the street,” she told AFP. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Her power was out for four hours after a vehicle slid into a power line on the highway, she said.
The biting cold is an immediate concern for hundreds of thousands of electricity customers who were without power, according to tracker poweroutage.us.
In El Paso, Texas, desperate migrants who had crossed from Mexico huddled for warmth in churches, schools and a civic center, Rosa Falcon, a school teacher and volunteer told AFP.
But some still chose to stay outside in -15 Fahrenheit temperatures because they feared attention from immigration authorities, she added.
In Chicago, Burke Patten of Night Ministry, a nonprofit dedicated to helping the homeless, said: “We’ve been handing out cold weather gear, including coats, hats, gloves, thermal underwear, blankets and sleeping bags, along with hand and foot warmers.”
Major Caleb Senn, Chicago area commander for the Salvation Army, said the organization had centers open for people to shelter from the fierce weather.
“Some of the people we’re seeing right now, they’ve just become homeless this year,” he said.
“Some of these people are actually frightened. This is the first time they’ve been in the elements without someplace to go.”
Some, however, were taking the biting cold in their stride.
In Canada, stoic last-minute holiday shoppers in downtown Toronto shrugged off the plunging temperatures.
Jennifer Campbell, of Caledon, Ontario, told AFP: “I think every few years we get some big storms and we just adjust. We are Canadians, that’s the way we do it.”
Air travel chaos
Transportation departments in North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, Iowa and elsewhere reported near-zero visibility whiteouts, ice-covered roads and blizzard conditions, and strongly urged residents to stay home.
At least two traffic fatalities were reported in Oklahoma Thursday. Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky, confirmed three in his state.
In Ohio, a 50-vehicle pile-up left at least one person dead, according to local media, while in Michigan an accident involving nine tractor trailers snarled traffic.
Drivers were being warned not to take to the roads — even as the nation reached what is usually its busiest time of year for travel.
“This is an epic, statewide hazard,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said at a press briefing.
“The roads are going to be like an ice skating rink and your tires cannot handle this.”
Around 5,000 US flights were canceled Friday and another 7,600 delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, many at international hubs in New York, Seattle and Chicago’s O’Hare.
The knock-on effects were spreading misery even to travelers arriving in balmy Los Angeles.
Christine Lerosen told ABC 7 she had been unable to find a flight out of Vancouver.
“I had to get my brother to drive me down to Seattle — had to book a flight out of Seattle to go to Denver, to fly here. My Seattle flight was delayed, my Denver flight was delayed and now they lost my luggage,” she said.
By Friday afternoon, the storm had acquired the status of “bomb cyclone” after air pressure dropped precipitously over 24 hours.
Bomb cyclones produce heavy rain or snow. They can also cause flooding at coasts, and generate hurricane-force wind.
Meteorologist Kelsey McEwen in Toronto tweeted that waves of up to 26 feet (eight meters) have been reported in Lake Erie, while in Ohio’s Fairport Harbor, winds gusted to 74 miles (120 kilometers) per hour, the NWS tweeted.
Rapid frostbite
Rich Maliawco, lead forecaster for the NWS in Glasgow, Montana, where wind chill plunged to -60 Fahrenheit overnight, warned the weather was extremely dangerous.
“With these kinds of wind chills, if you’re not wearing those warm layers… unprotected skin can get frostbite in less than five minutes,” he said.
Conditions were cold enough for people to post videos of themselves carrying out the “boiling water challenge,” where boiling water is thrown into the air and instantly freezes.
“We created our own cloud @ -17° F (-27° C) at the #Missoula International Airport,” tweeted NWS Missoula in Montana.
The National Weather Service (NWS) warns that the storm will continue to cause what it described as “widespread disruptions to large portions of the nation heading into the holiday weekend,” ranging from the Canadian border to Florida:
An immense winter storm that has brought a frigid blast to much of the CONUS along with impactful winter precipitation will persist in tracking across the eastern U.S. today. Winter weather hazards remain in effect from the Canadian border south to the Rio Grande, Gulf Coast and central Florida Peninsula while spanning from the Pacific Northwest to the Eastern Seaboard. The National Weather Service’s Watch Warning graphic ( https://www.weather.gov/) depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever. As of early Friday morning, over 240 million of people within the United States are under some form of winter weather warning or advisory.
(HT REMARK: Tonight, Christmas Eve, be sure to give thanks to the Lord our God for what you have. Compared to some others, we are truly blessed.)
