RUNDOWN
• 37 people are dead and hundreds of thousands without power following the prolonged winter storm.
• This winter storm is said to have brought dangerously cold temperatures, blizzard conditions and coastal flooding to almost the entirety of the US.
• More than 55 million people were under wind chill alerts Sunday morning.
At least 37 people are dead and hundreds of thousands without power following the prolonged winter storm that has brought heavy snow, high winds and brutal cold to most of the US this past week.
The most impact is around Buffalo, New York, where 43 inches of snow fell as of Sunday morning. According to the National Weather Service, the snowfall and blizzard conditions made roads impassable, froze power substations and left more than a dozen people dead, Erie County officials said.
This winter storm is said to have brought dangerously cold temperatures, blizzard conditions and coastal flooding to almost the entirety of the US, wrecking Christmas plans along the way.
According to a report, more than 55 million people were under wind chill alerts Sunday morning, and freeze warnings are in effect across the South while blizzard conditions persists across the Great Lakes, with frigid cold temperatures gripping the eastern two-thirds of the country.
Following a report from National Weather Service, major cities in the Southeast, Midwest and East Coast, recorded their coldest Christmas in decades. New York City also saw record cold temperatures on Christmas Eve at several locations, including its JFK and LaGuardia airports. The high at Central Park was 15 degrees, marking it the second-coldest December 24 in at least 150 years.
Regardless, temperatures are forecast to rebound later in the week with a much-welcomed warming trend with above-normal temperatures.
About 250,000 homes and businesses in the US had no electricity service as of about 11 a.m. ET Sunday, with nearly half of those affected in Maine and New York, according to PowerOutage.us. Since the start of the storm the number of outages has at times exceeded a million customers.
By Jane Kibathi.
