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Hundreds of thousands of Americans woke up in the dead of night on a dangerously windy and white Christmas Sunday after a brutal winter storm affected greater than half the country and killed at the least 34 people nationwide, with the death toll only set to rise.
Rescuers rushed to people trapped of their homes and cars by the snowdrifts, while tens of hundreds of households were left without heating within the bitter cold.
About 60% of the U.S. population faced some form of winter weather warning or warning this weekend, with a big swathe of the country from the eastern Rockies to the Appalachian Mountains facing temperatures well below normal, the National Weather Service said. he said.
In keeping with Poweroutage.us, at its peak, the storm knocked out power to 1.7 million customers from Maine to Seattle, though that number fell to fewer than 200,000 by Sunday afternoon.
In Buffalo, much of the town remained “impassable” after vicious, prolonged blizzards dumped 43 inches of snow on the airport and paralyzed the neighborhood. Officials said the driving ban was still in place and volunteers on snowmobiles were called in to rescue stranded drivers.
First responders have been “demoralized” because they were unable to navigate in conditions of zero visibility and freezing temperatures which have killed six people in the town, Mayor Byron Brown said during a Zoom Christmas update.
“We all know that number might be higher,” Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said of the reported death toll.
Six other people were killed within the storm elsewhere in Erie County, officials said. The ages of the Erie fatalities ranged from 26 to 93 years old.
And one 27-year-old Niagara County resident was killed after he contracted carbon monoxide poisoning because of this of snow blocking his furnace.
Wind gusts slowed to 40 mph from 79 mph on Sunday, but 4 to five feet of snow was predicted in the town by Sunday night, and greater than 27,000 homes were without power in Erie County on Christmas Day afternoon. by Poweroutage.us.
In keeping with local officials, emergency services were choked by the fast-falling snow and ten fire engines in the town were stranded. The snowdrifts in the town were as high as six feet.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said ambulances took three hours to travel, and the intense weather event might be “the worst storm in our community’s history.”
“Many, many neighborhoods, especially in the town of Buffalo, are still impassable,” he warned.
“It’s like a Category 3 hurricane mixed with snow,” Chief Tim Carney of the Erie County Sheriff’s Office told The Buffalo News of the brutal conditions.
Although parts of the region saw greater than 80 inches of snow last month, the most recent storm has been made historic for its unrelenting ferocity and proximity to Christmas.
“That is the primary time a blizzard has gone all of the solution to Christmas,” Christopher Tate, weather co-producer and meteorologist at Fox Weather, told The Post. “It was also coupled with a lot snow and really, very low temperatures.”
“Even during a blizzard, you possibly can rarely get absolutely zero visibility. It’s always as high as sixteen miles… and we have had that for a very long time with this method,” he said.
The bomb cyclone weather event – which occurs when atmospheric pressure drops and cold air collides with warmer, moist air to an explosive effect – was compounded by temperatures in the one digits and the collision of teenagers with the relatively warm air of Lake Erie, where the temperature was mid 40’s.
“It would probably be called within the local vernacular, it was a ‘Christmas Blizzard,'” Tate predicted.
Jeremy Manahan braved the snow and freezing temperatures to charge his phone in his automobile after spending nearly 30 hours without power in Queen City.
“There may be one warm shelter, but that may be too far for me. After all I am unable to drive because I’m stuck,” Manahan said. “And you possibly can’t be outside for greater than 10 minutes without frostbite.”
Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was taking his family to Canada for vacation when their vehicle got stuck in Buffalo on Friday. They spent hours within the vehicle attempting to keep warm until it was nearly buried in snow.
On Saturday morning, the SUV nearly ran out of gas and Ilunga took his 6-year-old daughter Destiny to a close-by shelter, while 16-year-old Cindy and their Pomeranian pup followed suit.
If I stay on this automobile, I’ll die here with my children, he remembered considering. When the desperate gambit paid off and the family arrived on the shelter, Ilunga cried.
“That is something I’ll always remember in my life,” he said.
The prolonged effects of Winter Storm Elliot were felt coast to coast, with power outages in communities from Maine to Washington state.
Cold weather was felt from Canada to Mexico, and migrants awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on a pandemic-era ruling barring them from entering the country camped near the border in sub-zero temperatures.
In Ohio, ten people died in multiple accidents, including an Ohio Turnpike collision involving greater than 4 dozen vehicles, and a utility employee was electrocuted.
Six others died in automobile accidents in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky.
Cold weather killed a seemingly homeless man in Colorado, and a lady died in Wisconsin after falling through river ice. A Vermont woman has died after being struck by a falling tree branch.
Blizzard and travel warnings were in place in Montana and parts of Idaho until Christmas.
“Travel might be very difficult or inconceivable,” the National Weather Service said. “A large blizzard will significantly reduce visibility, and a blizzard can lead to a whole lane closure.”
At the very least 1,707 domestic and international flights were canceled early Sunday afternoon. based on flight tracking website FlightAware.
In Jackson, Mississippi, officials on Sunday advised residents to boil their drinking water because of cracked water pipes within the cold weather.
In Florida, cold-blooded iguanas likely fell from trees after being immobilized by sub-zero temperatures in Tampa – for the primary time in nearly five years – and 43 degrees in West Palm Beach.
Greater than 91,000 homes and businesses were in darkness on Christmas morning in Maine, and utilities say lots of them could take days to renovate.
Still, whilst a serious utility warned of prolonged power outages that would affect 65 million people within the eastern United States, crews worked to get juice turned on for lots of of hundreds of individuals before Christmas.
Only about 6,500 customers were in the dead of night in North Carolina, down from a record of nearly half one million. Outside of Maine, most of the remaining of Recent England has been restored, a day after about 273,000 customers within the region were in darkness.
Lots of the newcomers who arrived at Truth Urban Ministry in Buffalo on Christmas Eve had ice and snow stuck to their clothes because their faces were frozen red from temperatures in the one digits.
“It’s touching to see the pain they thought they would not make it and to see that we opened the church and that gave them a way of relief,” said shelter employee Vivian Robinson.
“Those that are here really enjoy themselves. It would be a unique holiday for everybody.”
With postal wires