Thousands of flights cancelled as major winter storm moves across the U.S.
Forecasters say damage could rival that of a hurricane in some areas
Thousands of flights across the U.S. set to take off over the weekend were cancelled as a monster storm started to wreak havoc Saturday across much of the country and threatened to knock out power for days and snarl major roadways with dangerous ice.
Roughly 180 million people were under a winter storm warning from New Mexico to New England. The U.S. National Weather Service forecast warns of widespread heavy snow and a band of catastrophic ice stretching from east Texas to North Carolina. By midday Saturday, six millimetres of ice was reported in parts of southeastern Oklahoma, eastern Texas and portions of Louisiana.
"What really makes this storm unique is, just following this storm, it's just going to get so cold," said Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "The snow and the ice will be very, very slow to melt and won't be going away anytime soon, and that's going to hinder any recovery efforts."
President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
"We just ask that everyone would be smart — stay home if possible," Noem said.
As crews in some southern states began working to restore downed power lines Saturday, officials in some eastern states issued final warnings to residents.
"We are expecting a storm the likes of which we haven’t seen in years," New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Saturday while announcing restrictions on commercial vehicle travel and a 56 km/h speed limit on highways. She added: "It’s a good weekend to stay indoors."
Power outages hit Louisiana and Texas
Forecasters say the damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival that of a hurricane.
About 140,000 power outages were reported in the path of the winter storm Saturday, including more than 58,000 in Louisiana about 50,000 in Texas, according to poweroutage.us.
In Shelby County, Texas, near the Louisiana border, ice weighed down on pine trees and caused branches to snap, downing power lines. About a third of the county’s 16,000 electric customers lost power on Saturday.
"We have hundreds of trees down and a lot of limbs in the road," Shelby County Commissioner Stevie Smith said from his pickup truck. "I've got my crew out clearing roads as fast as we can. It's a lot to deal with right now."
There were reports of vehicles hitting fallen trees and trees falling onto houses in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, where more than half of all electric customers lost power.
"We got limbs that are dragging the ground," said Mark Pierce, a spokesperson for the local sheriff’s office. "These trees are just completely saturated with ice."
Airplanes are grounded
More than 13,000 flights were cancelled Saturday and Sunday across the U.S., according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Sunday’s cancellations, which are still growing, already are the most on any single day since the coronavirus pandemic, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
All Saturday flights were cancelled at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City, and all Sunday morning flights also were called off, as officials aimed to restart service Sunday afternoon at Oklahoma’s biggest airport.
Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport, a major hub, saw more than 700 departing flights cancelled on Saturday and nearly as many arriving flights called off. Disruptions were also piling up at airports in Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, and Charlotte, North Carolina.
By late Saturday afternoon, nearly all departing flights scheduled to leave Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Sunday had already been cancelled.
A warning about the biggest ice storm in a decade
Officials in Georgia advised people in the state’s northern regions to get off the roads by sundown Saturday and be prepared to stay put for at least 48 hours.
Will Lanxton, the senior state meteorologist, said Georgia could get "perhaps the biggest ice storm we have expected in more than a decade" followed by unusually cold temperatures.
"Ice is a whole different ballgame than snow," Lanxton said. "Ice, you can’t do anything with. You can’t drive on it. It’s much more likely to bring down power lines and trees."
Crews began treating highways with brine after midnight Saturday, with 1,800 workers on 12-hour shifts, Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry said.
"We’re going to do what we can to keep the ice from sticking to the roads," McMurry said. "This is going to be a challenge."
After earlier putting 500 National Guard members on standby, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Saturday that he was deploying 120 of them to northeast Georgia "to further strengthen our response in the hardest hit areas."
After sweeping through the South, the storm was expected to move into the Northeast, dumping snow exceeding 30 centimetres, the weather service predicted.
"Please, if you can avoid it, do not drive, do not travel, do not do anything that can potentially place you or your loved ones in danger," New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Saturday. "Instead, I urge every New Yorker who can to put a warm sweater on, turn on the TV, watch 'Mission Impossible' for the 10th time, above all to stay inside."