First Snow Day of the Cold Front in South Dakota: Weather Alerts for the Great Plains Break Down to the East, and Implications for Utilities
The NWS warned of record-breaking cold and life threatening wind chills over the Great Plains to spread to the east on Friday.
President Biden told reporters Thursday morning that there was a very serious weather alert here. There was a snow day when you were a kid. This is serious stuff.”
The cold front moved quickly, with temperatures plunging at a record pace. On Wednesday night in Cheyenne, Wyo., the temperature dropped more than 30 degrees in just nine minutes.
Governors in Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming declared states of emergency. In Indiana, Colorado and Missouri, governors activated the National Guard.
Texas had a winter storm in 2021 that overwhelmed the power grid and killed more than 200 people, but officials said they were expecting the grid to hold up even with little precipitation.
The Public Utility Commission’s Lake stated that the grid is ready and reliable. We expect to have enough generation to meet demand.
Visibility Implications of the Cold Low-Velocity Weather on Flights and Stations in Denver, O’Hare, and Midway
On roads and highways from Wyoming to Missouri, wind and snow combined to lower visibility, making it was dangerous to drive. Officials in multiple states, including Colorado and Illinois, urged drivers to avoid travel if at all possible.
Flight tracking site FlightAware reported nearly 5000 canceled flights as of 7:30 p.m.
No airport canceled more than Denver International Airport, where the recorded temperature of minus 24 degrees was the coldest recorded since 1990. At DIA, well over 500 flights — more than a quarter of all flights in or out of the airport — had so far been canceled Thursday. Nearly 480 more were delayed.
In Chicago, up to 8 inches of snow was expected to fall over the course of the day on Thursday and Friday, and temperatures were expected to fall below zero overnight.
City officials stressed that crews were working around the clock to keep flights moving at the city’s major airports, O’Hare and Midway, both of which serve as hubs for major airlines.
“These hard-working individuals will have at their disposal more than 350 pieces of snow removal equipment, more than 400,000 gallons of liquid deicer for runways and taxiways, and more than 5,000 tons of salt,” said Andrew Velasquez, the city’s deputy aviation commissioner.
Hundreds of miles away in Kansas City the winter weather brought a small amount of snow. But temperatures were expected to remain below freezing for days, putting a strain on the city’s homeless services.
Several area shelters had added beds this week; still, many reported being at or near capacity. Instead, some people sought shelter on the city’s streetcar, which was operating Thursday after crews had worked from 4 a.m. to clear the route and platforms.
“The library is closed. Pete, who was not willing to give his last name, said that if he went into a parking garage, he would probably get kicked out. There’s not a lot you can do.
The North Face of the Snow: Montana Weather Forecasts for Cowboys and Other Outdoor Commuters During the Boundary Fleeing
In Montana, the sun was out Thursday as the snow had moved eastward toward the Midwest. forecasts say the cold will stay until the weekend.
It’s nothing new to Montana, even though this is a worse winter than the last few years. We’ve been running cattle for a long time, so we kind of know how to get through stuff like this,” Willemsma said.
Hank said that he’d keep his hay out for his animals as the temperature neared minus 13 degrees.
Some of the people who contributed to the report were: Robert Chiarito, Eric Adelson, Ann Higa Klein, EllenYan, and Sarah Maslin Nir.
Poor visibility, ice-covered streets, and the storm’s expected to intensify throughout Friday are making for grim road conditions. Coastal flooding is also an issue, particularly along the shorelines of the Northeast.
The travel options were being disrupted by road and flight shut downs. In New York, flooding along the Long Island Rail Road forced part of the Long Beach branch to temporarily shut down.
“Christmas is canceled,” said Mick Saunders, a Buffalo, New York, resident who was two hours into blizzard conditions that are expected to last through Sunday morning. The family and friends all agreed that it was safer this way.
Three people killed in two car crashes on a roadway in Kansas City, and another died in a car accident on icy roads on Wednesday
Three people were killed in separate car crashes in north-central Kansas on Wednesday, one of which was confirmed to be weather-related, according to the Kansas Highway Patrol.
According to the Kansas City Police Department, one person died after losing control of their Dodge Caravan on icy roads in Kansas City. Police said in a statement that the Dodge went down the embankment over the wall and landed upside down in the creek.
According to the website Power Outage. US, about 1.2 million people in the US are experiencing power failures due to the winter weather. Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Virginia are all without power.
The National Weather Service said that the watch warning graphic depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings.
“I called it a kitchen sink storm because it is throwing everything at us but the kitchen sink,” Hochul said at a press conference Friday afternoon. Mother nature could not let us off the hook this weekend, as we had ice, flooding, snow, and freezing temperatures.
For Brian Trzeciak, the storm was “living up to the warnings” at his home in Hamburg, New York. The airport in Buffalo reported no visibility shortly after noon on Friday.
The Big Cruse of December 13. Snow and Ice on Christmas Day. The impact of the massive storm in the Central Appalachian Park
He said that his mother, sister and family live in the other direction. We always get together for Christmas Eve and Christmas, but we are all hunkering down in our houses until Monday.
Much of Florida will experience the peak of their cold on Christmas Day. It will be coldest Christmas Day since 1983 for Miami, Tampa, Orlando and West Palm Beach.
It is expected to intensify as it treks east across the country and become a bomb cyclone within a day or two. The storm’s pressure was forecast to match that of a Category 2 hurricane as it moved into the Great Lakes on Friday morning.
Friday will bring record-low temperatures in large swaths of the US, including from the Lower Mississippi Valley, northeastward, into the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys and stretching across large sections of the east from the Southeast to the Central Appalachians.
The Upper Midwest will see a lot of snow and high winds. The warning applies to a large portion of Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota. Buffalo will go under a storm warning Friday morning. Such warnings go in effect when snow and wind of 35 mph will reduce visibility to less than a quarter of a mile for at least three hours.
Whiteout conditions are possible even if snowfall ends because high winds can pick up snow already on the ground and cause low visibility.
A winter storm warning is in effect for western Washington, including Seattle, until 7 p.m. PST Friday. Additional snowfall of up to 2 inches is possible and ice accumulations could reach a quarter of an inch. It is anticipated that precipitation will begin in the form of snow and then sleet and then rain. More power outages are likely and travel will be made very difficult.
The ice caused the closure of runways at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where nearly half of flights going into and out of the airport were canceled, according to FlightAware. Further, all express services for Sound Transit, a regional transportation network in the Seattle metro area, were suspended Friday due to the icy conditions.
One of the biggest dangers of the massive winter storm besides heavy snow and blizzard conditions is the rapid drop in temperatures over a short period of time. The air will continue to get and feel colder, especially during night hours.
If you got a walk-in freezer, it would be cold enough to allow you to sit around and get naked, according to Randy Hayden, who runs 20,000 acres of cattle ranch in Gillette, Wyoming.
Winter Storm Snow in Nashville – The Hushuddle in the Dark Homes of a Nashville Principal, Kyle Elliott, and Sharon Wooding, 41
Sharisse Wooding, 41, a school principal from Memphis, said her flight home from a vacation in New York City had been canceled — and rebooked for Monday.
It was all “a little heartbreaking,” she said, lingering at La Guardia Airport as she tried to regroup. “This is not how I’m supposed to spend my Christmas break.”
The city of Nashville had a layer of ice and snow and no tourists for the holidays.
The water off the Cumberland River rose as Kyle stood on a bridge with a guitar strapped to his back. Fifteen minutes into the walk, he could no longer feel his feet.
“I’ve never experienced weather this cold before,” said Mr. Elliott, a native of Tennessee. I have never experienced a facial hair freeze before. I have now.”
In Nashville, roughly 55,000 customers across the city had lost power as of Friday afternoon, and state officials issued a plea to businesses and residents to reduce usage and help stabilize the power grid.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/12/23/us/winter-storm-snow-weather/in-buffalo-families-huddle-in-dark-cold-homes
Inuffalo Families Hauddle in Dark-Cold Homes During the First Outburst of the Chicago Harbor, North of Boston
Steve and Tara Agan have cattle on their farm which is located about an hour south of Des Moines.
“Your eyelashes freeze in minutes out here,” said Ms. Agan, adding that the biggest challenge was keeping her fingers warm, even in thick gloves, while bottle-feeding some of the calves. “But you don’t have a choice. You have to come out. The cows need food in the winter just as much as they do in the summer.
Goran Nedeljkovic, 59, a mail carrier in Chicago, said he was surprised that the postal service required letter carriers to complete their routes by foot on Friday.
“I have five or six layers on, so my body is OK, but my fingertips keep freezing through my gloves, my glasses keep fogging up and my scanner isn’t working because of the cold,” he said.
New Englanders reacted to the storm in a way that was typical of them, even as trees were up in the air and roads were closed. At the Landing, a brown-shingled restaurant at the edge of Marblehead Harbor, north of Boston, Dina Sweeney, the manager, stood outside watching the gray water heave and crash through the metal grates and railings at the harbor’s edge, scattering seaweed across the parking lot.
Inside the building, she said, flooding had caused significant damage, buckling the floor, despite the protective hatches built into the structure that allow the ocean water to pass in and out.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/12/23/us/winter-storm-snow-weather/in-buffalo-families-huddle-in-dark-cold-homes
A Cold Weather Huddle in the Dark Homes of a California Mom and Dad at a Cotejo: The First Day of Winter Break in Atlanta
Linney woke up at her parents’ rural home in Efland, hoping to start her day with a yoga class, but she didn’t realize they didn’t have electricity.
A well is located on the 10-acre property where Ms. Linney’s parents live. The water couldn’t be pumped because of no power. Ms Linney, who had traveled from her home in Southern California for the holidays, went to Durham on Friday to pick up lunch and a lot of bottled water.
The power came back on at her parents house at midafternoon, but she was worried that it would go out again, as temperatures were expected to plunge to 9 degrees.
Ms. Linney said they were going to keep the stove on. She said they might have to bunk down at a friend’s house if the power went out again.
There is a state of emergency in Atlanta because of the cold weather, and Governor Brian Kemp declared it this week.
At Ponce City Market, a trendy indoor-outdoor mall along the Atlanta Beltline, most of the action was inside as shoppers ran their chores two days before Christmas.
A woman dressed in a winter coat and a white wool hat was waiting on customers at an outpost of Marine Layer. The wind and cold would blow when the door was open. Ms. Velasco, who moved to Atlanta from Houston a few months ago, was not pleased.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/12/23/us/winter-storm-snow-weather/in-buffalo-families-huddle-in-dark-cold-homes
Eleven Days of Life at a Shelter: Keishaun Johnson, a Los Alamos Low-Cost Baby, and Joe Netzel
Local and state officials scrambled to open emergency shelters for residents who found themselves lacking the basics, serving hot food and distributing supplies.
The weekend weather is expected to dip into the 30s in Central Florida, a worrisome plunge for Keishaun Johnson, who has three children, a dog named Midas and no stable housing situation.
She and her family went to a homeless shelter this week in downtown Orlando, a facility that is doubling as a warming center, to gather supplies for the cold snap.
“We got jackets, blankets, all the hygiene stuff, clothes, socks, everything,” she said. “Now I’m 100 percent better with this weekend that’s coming up, because it was really scary.”
Lines at Chicago O’Hare International Airport appeared to be shorter than the day before, and some travelers said they were pleasantly surprised at the lack of chaos.
Joe Netzel hadn’t expected to be able to get in the door with his wife and 3-year-old daughter at the airport. The flight is on time.