US forecasters warned on Thursday of “potentially crippling impacts across central and eastern” parts of the country, producing widespread disruption to travel and utilities over the holiday season, as an arctic blast surged from west to east.
About 200 million people in the lower 48 states were under extreme weather alerts as a freezing air mass sent temperatures into a nosedive, said Bob Oravec, a forecaster with the National Weather Service (NWS) in College Park, Maryland.
An NWS advisory said the “powerful winter storm” would “produce widespread disruptive and potentially crippling impacts across the central and eastern United States”.
“Record-breaking cold and life-threatening wind chills” were forecast “over the Great Plains to overspread the eastern half of the nation by Friday”, with “significant freezing rain possible across parts of western Oregon and Washington” from Thursday night.
In Portland, Oregon, the mayor, Ted Wheeler, declared a state of emergency. So did Multnomah county, home to Portland.
Chris Voss, director of emergency management in Multnomah county, said his biggest worry was a precipitous drop in temperature expected in a region where temperatures lower than 25F (-4C) are uncommon. With wind chill, those living on the streets could experience temperatures that feel below zero, Voss said.
“The Pacific north-west is really seeing extraordinarily cold temperatures for us,” he told the Associated Press. “I think in my seven and a half years living in the Pacific Northwest and specifically here in my local area, I don’t remember a specific instance where I can remember temperatures quite this low … This is absolutely not to be taken lightly.”
According to the NWS, the “major and anomalous storm system” was expected to produce “a multitude of weather hazards through early this weekend, as heavy snowfall, strong winds and dangerously cold temperatures span from the northern Great Basin through the Plains, upper midwest, Great Lakes and the northern/central Appalachians.
“At the forefront of the impressive weather pattern is a dangerous and record-breaking cold air mass in the wake of a strong Arctic cold front diving southward.”
In some states temperatures had already begun to deteriorate quickly, plunging in Denver on Wednesday, the first official day of winter, from a daytime-high 51F (10C) into the low-single digits. Below zero was expected by Thursday.
“That’s the kind of changes that are going to be occurring as this front pushes southward,” Oravec told the AP. “Rapid temperature drops, sometimes 50 or more degrees colder than the previous day. It’s a pretty powerful, powerful system.”
The extreme weather coincided with the start of a holiday travel season shaping up as one of the busiest in decades, particularly as travel continues to bounce back after the Covid pandemic. Nearly 113 million people could travel more than 50 miles beginning on Friday, according to the American Automobile Association.
More than 2,000 flights scheduled between Wednesday and Friday, including services into and out of the US, were canceled, the flight-tracking service FlightAware said. Airlines including Delta, United Airlines and American Airlines waived change fees and fare differences for passengers in a range of affected areas.
The US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told MSNBC: “We had a great Thanksgiving week with minimal disruption. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be that way going into Christmas.”
The storm could dump up to a foot of snow on the upper midwest between Wednesday and Friday, with blizzard conditions from the northern Plains states to the Great Lakes.
By Thursday night, Oravec added, a so-called “bomb cyclone” will probably form as the strong arctic front sweeps across the Great Lakes, driving temperatures to record-breaking lows on the Gulf coast and the eastern US by Friday.
Wind-chill and hard-freeze warnings extended through much of Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, with a hard-freeze watch for the Florida panhandle. Freezing weather and wind chills cold enough to induce frostbite on exposed skin in minutes, dominated much of the forecast.
Wind-chill values dropping to -40F were expected across the west, from the Cascades to the Rockies and into the northern and central plains, with some areas seeing wind chill plunging as far as -70F, the NWS said, adding that the extreme cold posed a particular danger to livestock.
The storm will test new winterization measures on the Texas power grid. Hundreds of Texans died in February 2021 after wintry storms overburdened the grid and millions lost power. Officials at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said this week they were confident the grid could handle increased demand.
Heavy rains, strong winds and coastal flooding were in store for parts of the north-east. The arctic front was expected to arrive thereafter, causing wet roadways to freeze and ice to form on power lines.
North Carolina and Kentucky declared states of emergency while West Virginia issued a state of preparedness. Colorado activated 100 national guard troops.