(Chicago) One 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 on Friday by a winter storm of rare intensity.
“Historical” according to the American Weather Service (NWS), it gave rise to heavy snowfall, icy gusts and temperatures dropping to -48°C in places, capable of transforming boiling water into ice droplets in an instant.
Friday morning, more than 240 million people, or 70% of Americans, were affected by alerts or calls for caution in the United States.
PHOTO SETH HERALD, AGENCY FRANCE-PRESSE
Antonio Smothers tries to get his vehicle started in Nashville, Tennessee on Friday.
The phenomenon caused chaos in transport. A tile as millions of Americans flood the roads and airports for the holiday season.
In New York State, a travel ban has been issued in Erie County. “We stay at home […] I can’t see on the other side of the street” because of the snow, Jennifer Orlando, affected by this ban in the city of Hamburg, told AFP.
Due to the accident of a vehicle colliding with a power line, she found herself without power for about four hours, she said.
Up to around 1.5 million homes were without electricity on Friday, notably in North Carolina, Maine and Virginia, according to the specialized site PowerOutage.us. On Friday evening, they were still a million in the dark.
The storm was particularly impressive in its magnitude, stretching from the Canadian border in the north to the Mexican border in the south.
In El Paso, Texas, shelters have been opened so that migrants from Mexico can protect themselves from the risk of hypothermia in the freezing temperatures.
But many are too suspicious to accept this offer and many of them “simply sleep wrapped in blankets”, Rosa Falcon, a 56-year-old volunteer, told AFP.
Chaos in transport
Friday evening, the specialized site FlightAware listed 5,500 canceled flights in the United States, the airports most affected being those of Seattle, New York, Chicago and Detroit.
PHOTO MANDEL NGAN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A traveler looks at the arrivals and departures board at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., on Friday.
To get to Los Angeles, Christine Lerosen could not board in Vancouver in Canada and had to persuade her brother to drive her to Seattle, to take another plane, with a stopover in Denver.
“My flight from Seattle was delayed, my flight from Denver was delayed and now they’ve lost my luggage,” she sighed to ABC7.
Several states have declared states of emergency, such as New York, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Georgia and North Carolina. With visibility close to zero, the blizzard and frost affecting much of the country, the roads have become very dangerous.
“People should stay at home, not venture on the roads, warned on CNN the governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear. Your family wants to see you home for Christmas, but most of all they want to see you alive. »
He confirmed that three people had died on Kentucky roads. In Oklahoma, at least two people have died on the road, according to the agency responsible for emergency management in that state.
In Ohio, a massive collision of about 50 vehicles on a highway killed at least one person, according to local media. In Michigan, traffic on a highway was interrupted Friday morning, due to an accident involving nine semi-trailers.
“Bomb depression”
This storm of rare intensity is caused by a “low pressure bomb”: a powerful conflict between two masses of air, one very cold from the Arctic and the other tropical from the Gulf of Mexico, aggravated by the fact that the atmospheric pressure dropped very quickly, in less than 24 hours.
This type of storm occurs “only once in a generation”, according to the US National Weather Service in Buffalo.
In Chicago, where it was around – 20 ° C during the day on Friday, the homeless aid organization Night Ministry expressed concern about the number of beds made available by the City, which it said was insufficient.
“Some of the people we’re taking in now became homeless just this year,” Major Caleb Senn, head of the Salvation Army in Chicago, told AFP. Some are really scared. It’s the first time they’ve been at the mercy of nature with no place to go. »
PHOTO KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Mist rises over Lake Michigan in Chicago on Friday morning.
Canada must also face this phenomenon, with extreme cold, storm and even blizzard warnings issued for a large majority of the territory.
But in Toronto, the freezing temperatures didn’t put off Jennifer Campbell, who came to do some last-minute Christmas shopping in the city center.
“We have big storms regularly and we are adapting,” said this tourist from Ontario. We are Canadian, it’s our way. »