Almost 1.5 million American homes without electricity, thousands of canceled flights, closed highways and sometimes fatal accidents: in the United States, the day before Christmas was disrupted by a winter storm of scarce intensity.
Without surprise, this storm turns out to be brutal, as feared by the authorities. The affected areas extend over more than 3,000 kilometres.
Snowfall, high winds and rain have brought many airports to a standstill as it was expected to be the busiest time of the year with nearly 45 million travellers, many of whom had to revise their plans. Thursday, 11,000 flights were canceled or delayed, reports our correspondent in the United States, Loubna Anaki.
Calls for caution
Up to around 1.5 million homes were without power on Friday. More than 240 million people, or 70% of Americans, were affected by alerts or calls for caution.
Extreme #blizzard stranding motorists Downtown Buffalo. Family here stranded 7 hours a block from shelter. @bclemms and I escorted to shelter. Seems like survival situations playing out a block or two away in whiteout. Worst blizzard I have ever covered pic.twitter.com/ZvnBR9KeX7
— Reed Timmer, PhD (@ReedTimmerAccu) December 24, 2022
In some towns such as Buffalo, New York, authorities have banned traffic on snowy and windy roads, which have become too risky. This is also the case in Minnesota or on much of the main road that crosses the country from east to west. This storm is accompanied by polar temperatures. More than half of the country has fallen below zero. – 33, -40, up to -55 degrees in the Plains region.
Rare episode, but not unreleased
These extreme cold phenomena are extremely rare, but not newexplains Frédéric Decker, meteorologist in France, at the microphone of Baptiste Coulon of RFI’s French Service: ” The frequency of this type of event is more like every 30 to 40 years if we are talking about the combination of all the phenomena: the mass of very cold air, the blizzard, the snowfall (…) We have always had these types of very cold events, including the last century, 150 years ago. There is nothing new, we cannot link this episode of cold to global warming “.
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350,000 homes without electricity in Canada
According to Pascale Guericolas, RFI correspondent in Canada, the same scenes of chaos were observed in neighboring Canada. In Quebec, as well as in Ontario, the neighboring province, very strong gusts of more than 100 km/h damaged electrical wires. More than 350,000 Quebec homes no longer have electricity, and repair teams sometimes have trouble getting to the site with the snow-covered road.
Depending on the region, it fell snow, rain, and ice formed, forcing authorities to close several roads. The cold should set in in the next few hours, which may further complicate travel on the icy road. In Vancouver, in western Canada, the accumulations of ice on the cables of several bridges forced their closure. And the situation is likely to continue for at least two days.
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