A potentially historic storm over the United States. The National Weather Services (NWS) are announcing heavy snowfall and ice accumulations with potential “catastrophic local scale” consequences from the southern plains to the Atlantic coast. Many supermarkets were robbed. The cold wave will extend over more than 3,200 kilometers, from Texas to New England, moving east, indicates the American channel CNN.
More than 600,000 customers were without electricity this Sunday, January 25. Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana in the south have the highest number of residential and business customers without power, each topping 100,000. A total of 20 states as well as the US capital, Washington, have declared a state of emergency.
Air traffic is largely disrupted, almost 14,000 flights to and from the country have been canceled over the weekend, and thousands more were delayed, according to FlightAware. The storm, described as “unusually widespread and long-lasting” by the NWS, is caused by the arrival of an Arctic air mass from Canada.
In New York, where temperatures are expected to remain negative all day and up to 30 centimeters of snow are expected in Central Park, Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked to avoid all non-essential travel on Sunday. A decision will be made during the day regarding a possible closure of schools on Monday, in which case classes would be provided online.
Texas under a thick layer of snow
Snowfall has already been recorded this Saturday, January 24 in the central United States, notably in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, where some localities showed 20 centimeters on the ground Saturday evening, the NWS said. Dallas, accustomed to mild temperatures, saw the thermometer drop to -6°C.
In Houston, reception centers, particularly for the homeless, opened Saturday afternoon in this city of nearly 2.4 million inhabitants.
“Last night I stood in my camp in the rain, and it wasn’t even really cold. But I know tonight it would probably kill me,” Caroll Eaton, a 71-year-old homeless man I met in Houston, told AFP.
While the Texas power grid experienced a general outage during the last major winter storm in 2021, authorities were reassuring about its strength this time. According to the poweroutage.us website, more than 180,000 homes and businesses were nevertheless without electricity Sunday morning, including some 45,000 in Texas and 67,000 in the neighboring state of Louisiana.
Donald Trump said on Saturday that he had approved emergency declarations for 12 states in the south and east coast, which will allow the faster deployment of resources from Fema, the American natural disaster management agency.
“What happened to global warming,” quips Trump
“Could the environmental insurgents please explain to me? What happened to global warming,” the American president declared on Friday January 23. The relationship between climate change and winter storms of this type, when Arctic air usually confined to the North Pole escapes towards the North American continent, is the subject of debate within the scientific community.
Researchers note that disruptions in the polar vortex, which send these Arctic air masses towards the United States, have become more frequent over the past twenty years. This could be due to the relatively rapid warming of the Arctic, which is weakening the wind belt usually insulating the atmosphere above this polar region of North America. But scientists are waiting to have more data, over a longer period, to firmly establish a link between these extreme winter storms and climate change.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul urged residents to stay home due to the bitter cold. “Five or six minutes outside can literally be dangerous for your health,” she stressed. Authorities warned of extreme, life-threatening cold that could persist for up to a week after the storm, particularly in the Northern Great Plains and Upper Midwest, where temperatures are expected to drop below -45°C.
