The US Midwest and East were hit by a severe winter storm on Friday, with conditions causing car crashes and the deaths of multiple individuals. To date, as many as 12 deaths have been reported.
Three separate car crashes were reported in Kansas on Wednesday evening, all believed to have been caused by poor road conditions, with one fatality confirmed to have been caused by the extreme weather.
Three deaths in Kentucky were also reported with two of those deaths being attributed to car accidents caused by poor weather, and the other believed to be a housing insecure person in Louisville who was found outside with no obvious signs of trauma.
A person in Kansas City, Missouri, lost control of their minivan on an icy street and plunged into Brush Creek, landing their car upside down and partially submerged in the icy stream. That person later died at the hospital.
Some 1.3 million customers were left without power after severe winds battered power lines. The states of Maine, North Carolina, Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania were hit the hardest by power outages.
On Friday at 6:39 p.m. EST, Maine still had 230,499 people without power as another 120,316 people in New Hampshire left in the same situation. Some 96,271 were without electricity in New York, 91,364 people in Virginia were without power and 87,188 people in Pennsylvania were left in the dark.
“This is not like a snow day when you were a kid,” President Joe Biden warned on Thursday. “This is serious stuff.”
Parts of Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming have already seen wind chills below -50 degrees Fahrenheit in the past two days, while the state of Texas also saw temperatures below freezing early Friday afternoon. The cities of Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Tallahassee are all expected to have their coldest temperatures ever recorded on Christmas Eve.
“I called it a kitchen sink storm because it is throwing everything at us but the kitchen sink,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said at a press conference Friday afternoon. “We’ve had ice, flooding, snow, freezing temperatures, and everything that mother nature could wallop at us this weekend.”
“Whiteout conditions, frigid temperatures, and the waves are like what you would see during a hurricane,” said New York resident Vrian Trzeciak, who has a home in Hamburg, New York.
“My mother lives about 30 minutes away and so does my sister and her family, in the other direction,” he added. “We always get together for Christmas Eve and Christmas, but we’re all hunkering down in our houses until it all stops on Monday.”
As the storm moved East, leaving California to warm up in 80F weather, it turned into a “bomb cyclone” with a pressure expected to match that of a Category 2 hurricane as it traversed the Great Lakes early Friday. The cities of Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Atlanta saw wind gusts higher than 45 to 55 mph.
"This is a difficult weather event. We needed to prepare not only for rain, but also tidal flooding that was made worse by the new moon, in addition to large amounts of wind offshore that was piling water into New York Harbor, in addition to Jamaica Bay, adding about three [feet] above mean tide flood surge," said Zachary Iscol, New York City's Emergency Management Commissioner.
The "next phase," he warned, "is going to be a precipitous drop in temperature, going down to the low teens, single digits over the weekend."
Across the United States about 5,100 domestic and international flights were canceled and another 8,400 were delayed on Friday, making holiday travel plans impossible for some. Airports in Cleveland, Buffalo and Chicago reported on Friday morning that more than half of their departing flights were canceled.
“My family is calling, they want me home for Christmas, but they want me to be safe, too,” said Ashley Sherrod, who planned to fly from Nashville, Tennessee, to Flint, Michigan, until her flight was canceled. “Christmas is starting to, for lack of a better word, suck.”
Alaska Airlines and Allegiant Air were forced to cancel more than a third of their flights on Friday and more than 400 Southwest Airlines flights were delayed. Some major US airlines including American, Delta, and United said they were waiving fees to change flights due to the severe weather.