About 140 million people—more than 40% of the U.S. population—were placed under winter storm warnings stretching from New Mexico to New England, News.Az reports, citing AP.
Forecasts from the National Weather Service predict widespread heavy snowfall, along with a swath of potentially catastrophic ice extending from eastern Texas to North Carolina.
Meteorologists warned that the damage, particularly in regions heavily affected by ice accumulation, could be comparable to the destruction caused by a hurricane.
Ice and sleet that hit northern Texas overnight were moving toward the central part of the state on Saturday, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said. Expecting ice and hazardous conditions, officials said all schools in Houston will be closed on Monday.
Ice and sleet that hit northern Texas overnight were moving toward the central part of the state on Saturday, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said. Expecting ice and hazardous conditions, officials said all schools in Houston will be closed on Monday.
More than 95,000 power outages were reported across the country Saturday morning, about 36,000 of them in Texas and 10,000 more in Virginia. Snow and sleet continued to fall in Oklahoma.
After sweeping through the South, the storm was expected to move into the Northeast, dumping about a foot (30 centimeters) of snow from Washington through New York and Boston, the weather service predicted. Temperatures reached minus 29 F (minus 34 C) just before dawn in rural Lewis County and other parts of upstate New York after days of heavy snow.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told residents on the social media platform X that the state Department of Transportation was pretreating the roads and told residents, “Stay home if possible.”
More than 3,600 flights were canceled Saturday, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. More than 6,200 flights were called off for Sunday.
Angela Exstrom was supposed to fly back to Omaha, Nebraska, from a trip in Mexico, but she learned her Saturday flight out of Houston had been canceled. So instead, she is going back via Los Angeles.
“If you live in the Midwest and travel in the winter, stuff can happen,” she said.
