Travel disruptions, power outages and frigid temperatures are expected to affect 150 million Americans today and through the weekend as a massive storm clobbers the US with heavy snow and freezing rain from the Central Plains to the East Coast, the National Weather Service said.
The storm, which could impact nearly half the country’s population, will bring up to 20 inches of snow in the Appalachians and West Virginia mountains, while most people living in the eastern US could face dangerous slick or frozen roads and potential power outages from ice-laden trees and branches falling and snapping power lines, officials said.
“With the extreme cold in the North and the storm, half of all Americans are under some form of weather advisories,” said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the NWS’s Weather Prediction Centre in College Park, Maryland.
Agricultural meteorologists said the heavy snow and ice should benefit dormant winter wheat crops in Oklahoma, where 23 per cent of the state is in severe drought, according to a weekly US Drought Monitor report.
But plunging temperatures in the storm’s wake could put wheat fields without protective snow cover “at risk of cold-weather injury,” the US Department of Agriculture said in a daily weather note.
Livestock will face stressful conditions due to ice and snow in the Southern Plains and extreme cold in the north, the USDA said.
New York City, Boston, Baltimore and Washington, DC, could receive 4 to 10 inches of heavy, wet snow starting tomorrow, Hurley said, with temperatures in the low -5.5C in DC, with Boston seeing a low of -14C.
Throughout the storm, New York state was expected to be under a “Code Blue,” which requires social service providers to extend shelter hours and ensure the homeless have access to them.
In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of emergency, activating extra personnel and equipment to help control traffic and monitor power outages.
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