More than a million Americans are expected to celebrate this coming Christmas without electricity, thanks to the “Cyclone Bomb”, the terrible storm called “a once-in-a-generation event”, which is hitting the US these days and was compared by forecasters to a hurricane in a blizzard.
The hardest hit by the cold is the state of Montana, whose residents are dealing with a cold of 45 degrees below zero. In Buffalo, New York, the National Weather Service reported “zero mile” visibility. Even the usually mild southern states of Florida and Georgia are currently under severe freezing weather warnings.
According to the National Weather Service of the United States, an extreme drop in temperatures could cause areas that suffer from flooding to freeze, and they noted that the temperatures are expected to endanger the lives of a large proportion of citizens in the central and eastern United States. “In some areas, being outside can lead to frostbite within minutes.” , the NWS noted.
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The extreme weather kept millions of travelers away from their Christmas destinations as 7,423 flights were delayed and 3,426 canceled within, into or out of the United States. Driving on the road was also defined as “extremely dangerous” due to snow, ice and flooding. “Traveling in these conditions will be extremely dangerous, sometimes impossible,” the NWS noted.
Because of this, many highways in the country were closed after a wave of accidents – including a fatal accident involving about 50 vehicles on the Ohio highway, in which four were killed.