The heavy snowfall that has hit much of the East Coast of the United States since last week, from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, has put nearly 100 million Americans on alert, canceled flights and cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes. According to the American network CNN, at least seven people died.
Cold wind alerts were issued for Texas and the central area of ​​the country, where expected minimum temperatures are approaching -20 degrees Celsius, the National Weather Service said. “Cold wind can cause hypothermia in a short period of time if precautions are not taken,” it said.
Winter storm warnings and warnings also remained in effect for Tennessee, Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania and New England, where hail and snow are expected to hamper travel. The state of New Mexico recorded accumulation of more than 90 centimeters of snow. In the Chicago area, the accumulation was almost 30 centimeters.
Winter storms are expected to finally leave the country’s East Coast starting this Saturday (5), but extremely cold temperatures are expected to remain, including record negatives, in the south-central region of the United States, government meteorologists said. American.
Across Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio and New York, more than 370,000 homes were without power on Friday after storms toppled power lines. On Saturday morning, the situation began to be restored and 196,000 homes were still experiencing this problem, most of them in the northwest of the country, according to the website PowerOutage, which monitors the situation.
On Thursday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the storm was “one of the most significant ice events we’ve had in the state of Texas in at least several decades.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul urged residents to avoid leaving their homes. “This storm is throwing everything at us, we have snow, freezing rain, hail, icy roads,” Hochul said.
Airlines canceled a further 3,600 flights on Friday, according to flight tracking service FlightAware, a day after canceling 5,000 flights on Thursday. Until this Saturday morning, the portal had just over 1,000 cancellations.
Airlines have faced disruptions to their operations since December, in a combination of factors that added bad weather to a shortage of employees, left by contamination by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Source: Folha
