Powerful winter storms in numerous US states left multiple people dead, damaged buildings and cut power to tens of thousands, authorities said, as forecasters warned of another round of snow and ice sweeping in for the weekend.
Fatalities have been reported in at least nine states this week as one of the deadliest cold snaps of the season took hold from the Pacific north-west to the north-east and as far south as Mississippi.
At least 14 deaths in separate cases in Tennessee this week were weather-related, according to the state’s department of health, with a new winter weather advisory issued on Thursday morning for several regions.
Officials in Oregon said three people were killed and a baby rescued when a powerline fell on a parked car in Portland on Wednesday during an ice storm. Witnesses said two adults and a teenager were electrocuted when they left the vehicle and a passerby pulled the infant to safety.
“When the feet of the individuals touched the ground and their bodies were touching the car, they became part of the active electrical circuit which resulted in their deaths,” a spokesperson for Portland’s fire department said.
Police in Pennsylvania said on Wednesday that five women from New York were killed the previous day when a tractor-trailer struck people at the scene of a crashed minivan on Interstate 81 in the state’s snowy north-east.
Overall, at least 43 people have been killed in nine states since the winter’s coldest air swept in last weekend, CNN reported.
In addition to causing fatalities and damage, the wintry blast caused cancellations of – and delays to – hundreds of flights. It also left schools and offices closed in numerous locales.
Snow and ice storms from the midwest to the north-east as well as a new round of treacherous wintry conditions in the north-west are in store for the weekend, the National Weather Service warned, with January’s big freeze showing little sign of loosening its grip for at least several more days.
“It’s been an exhausting stretch of busy weather across the Lower 48 [states],” the NWS station in La Crosse, Wisconsin, tweeted alongside an animation of how winter weather warnings and watches spread across the US this week, even into parts of northern Florida.
Experts say a thaw is expected next week. “The nation could use a breather from this. But it won’t happen immediately,” the Weather Channel posted to its website.
“Another blast of cold air will plunge through the Plains and Mississippi Valley Thursday and Friday, then hang out in the south-east this weekend. In most areas, this latest cold blast won’t be quite as cold as what we saw earlier this week. But it will still be uncomfortable.”
After a brief respite on Wednesday, temperatures were set to plummet again on Thursday night and struggle to climb to freezing in cities including Oklahoma City, Nashville, Philadelphia and New York City, forecasters said.
AccuWeather said on Thursday that new snowstorms would blanket areas from Chicago to Pittsburgh, Washington DC and New York.
“This will be a colder storm than most have grown accustomed to in much of the midwest and the north-east in that the lower ground and air temperatures combined with the fluffy or grainy nature of the snow will quickly accumulate on streets and highways,” AccuWeather’s senior meteorologist, Brett Anderson, said.
Its website said it would be a “two-part storm” bringing snow that could affect 115 million people across 18 states, followed by the coldest Arctic air of the season so far across much of the eastern US. The second, stronger wave of snowfall was expected to hit farther south, perhaps as far as south-eastern Virginia.
The NWS, meanwhile, warned of a new wave of freezing rain and heavy mountain snowfall in the Pacific north-west lasting until the weekend, with heavy rain on the Oregon and Washington coasts threatening flash flooding where the ground is already saturated.
