Houston | A cold wave is expected to spread to the United States after 10 deaths and millions of people deprived of electricity, including southern states such as Texas with typically moderate temperatures.
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The National Weather Service (NWS) has warned of an “unprecedented and vast area of hazardous winter conditions” from the East Coast to the West Coast, with more than 150 million Americans on winter weather alerts.
While a new storm is expected in the Great Lakes (northeast), New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday ordered emergency services to prepare, predicting “snow and snow. Snow and strong winds across the state for the next two days.”
Freezing rain, snowfall, snowstorm and polar hail have hit the United States for several days.
While ten deaths were attributed to bad weather, authorities urged residents to be careful when traveling in these precarious conditions.
“We haven’t spared the pandemic for nearly a year to lose people to a snowstorm or snowstorm,” Kentucky Governor Andrew Peshire said.
Giant snowstorms piling up on a highway near Dallas left at least six people dead and dozens injured on Thursday.
Louisiana authorities confirmed the death of a man on Monday in Lafayette, the first death linked to bad weather in this southern state.
A man died in a snowstorm car accident in Kentucky, according to CBS.
A young boy was killed after falling into a frozen pond in Tennessee, local media quoted police as saying.
An elderly man died in Texas, bringing the cold wave death toll to ten.
Texas is particularly affected by this historic cold wave, which is more used to recording temperatures than ice.
So a thick blanket of snow covered the streets, trees and cars of Austin, the state capital. Some places even saw the temperature drop to -18 ° C this weekend while a large city like Houston recorded -9 ° C.
Residents of Texas cities find themselves clogged up in their homes, and children are unable to go out for not having enough warm clothes in this situation as the typical average temperature is around 20 degrees.
Due to heavy snowfall and frost and measures to avoid network overload, nearly 2.8 million homes were cut off on Monday at 7:30 pm GMT at Lone Star State, according to Poweroutage.us.
Severe weather is expected to spread further south, with the NWS warning that severe thunderstorms, heavy rains and warm temperatures are expected in southern Georgia and Florida.
President Joe Biden on Sunday signed a declaration of a state of emergency in Texas, providing federal assistance to supplement the state’s relief.
Cold records
Along with Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kansas, Mississippi and Oregon, where 300,000 people live without electricity, it has issued state of emergency declarations. More than 3,000 flights were canceled Monday across the country according to FlightAware.
“More than 150 million Americans live in a place where vigilance plans have been put in place against extreme cold, freezing rain or snow storms,” the National Weather Service said on Monday.
“This astonishing cold wave that hit the continental United States is linked to a combination of a high-pressure area in the Arctic that has freezing temperatures and a very active depression with waves of precipitation,” the foundation said.
“Hundreds of hail records have been recorded and will be destroyed during this polar cold wave,” she added.
In the center of the country, temperatures are already reaching record highs over the weekend with -45 degrees Celsius in parts of Minnesota, one of the coldest states in the United States.
The weather services have warned that temperatures are likely to drop below seasonal standards in the central and southern plains of the country through Tuesday.
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