A powerful winter storm already blamed for fatal car crashes, widespread power outages and dangerously cold temperatures will keep pummeling the United States with freezing temperatures through Christmas Day.
The massive footprint of the winter weather and its timing during a busy holiday travel week makes the arctic blast particularly dangerous. The National Weather Service on Friday said its warnings and advisories covered about 200 million people — “one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever,” forecasters said.
The dangers are highly localized and not limited to snowfall. Blizzard conditions created whiteouts and stranded motorists in the Buffalo, New York, area. But on the other side of the state, flooding was the concern, with water rescues in Queens, a New York City borough on Long Island.
Arctic air from a winter storm system engulfed much of the East Coast on Friday, causing power outages and snarling holiday travel with heavy snow, blizzard conditions and dangerously cold temperatures.
It’s the the same system that already has been blamed for several deaths and wreaked havoc on holiday travel plans. More than 5,000 U.S. flights were canceled by 6 p.m. ET Friday, according to the flight tracking website Flight Aware.
State officials reported numerous fatalities due to vehicle crashes that authorities have linked to the winter weather. Four deaths were confirmed in a massive pileup involving dozens of vehicles on the Ohio Turnpike. A Kansas City, Missouri, driver died after skidding into a creek, and three others were killed Wednesday in separate crashes in northern Kansas.
