A powerful winter storm is expected to blanket a large swath of the United States with bitterly cold weather, heavy snowfall and life-threatening wind chills starting on Wednesday, complicating holiday travel plans for millions of Americans.
Heavy snowfall and low visibility from a strong winter storm blanketing Pacific Canada has already forced the Canada’s second busiest airport in Vancouver to halt all flights on Tuesday morning, with disruptions expected to continue ahead of the Christmas weekend.
The same storm is expected to bring the nasty weather to a large swath of the United States, extending from the Northwest and Great Plains southeast into the Appalachians. It will likely lead to flight delays and impassable roadways during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
About 200 million people in the Lower 48 states in US are under extreme weather alerts as cold air descends from the Northern Plains, sending temperatures into a nosedive, said Bob Oravec, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.
Temperatures in Denver, for example, could drop on Wednesday from a high of 51 degrees to the low-single digits by evening.
“That’s the kind of changes that are going to be occurring as this front pushes southward: rapid temperature drops, sometimes 50 or more degrees colder than the previous day,” Oravec said. “It’s a pretty powerful, powerful system.”
The storm, fed by moisture from the Great Lakes, could dump up to a foot (0.3 meter) of snow on the Upper Midwest between Wednesday and Friday, with blizzard conditions stretching from the Northern Plains states to the Great Lakes region.
By Thursday night, a so-called “bomb cyclone” will likely form along the strong arctic front across the Great Lakes, sending pressure sharply lower in a 24-hour period. That could drive temperatures to record-breaking lows on the Gulf Coast and in Florida and the eastern United States by Friday, Oravec said.
Authorities across the US are worried about the potential for power outages and warned people to take precautions to protect the elderly, the homeless and livestock — and, if possible, to postpone travel.
The holiday travel season is shaping up to be the third-busiest in decades as nearly 113 million people could pack up and journey more than 50 miles from home beginning Friday, according to motorists group AAA.
Heavy rainfall, strong winds and potentially dangerous coastal flooding are in store for parts of the Northeast coastline and New England on Thursday and Friday, the weather service said, before the arctic front arrives and causes a freeze. As much as 3 inches (7.6 cm) of rain are predicted.
Officials are warning of severe travel disruptions due to the weather. With temperatures dropping more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit within hours, wet roads could freeze in a flash, the weather service said.
“We had a great Thanksgiving week with minimal disruption. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be that way going into Christmas,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told MSNBC.
While beefed-up airline staffing and other improvements since Thanksgiving will make travel easier during the holiday season, “nobody can control the weather. That’s definitely going to be causing some disruptions,” Buttigieg said.
Americans traveling by air should prepare for delays and be flexible in their plans, while drivers also need to be prepared for severe weather, he added.
The northern-most regions of the U.S. could see wind chills approaching 70 degrees below zero (minus 57 Celsius) — cold enough to leave exposed skin frostbitten in a matter of minutes. The heaviest snow is expected in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, according to the National Weather Service, and frigid wind will be fierce across the country’s mid-section.
For travelers, an early sign of trouble came Tuesday in Seattle, where a winter storm caused at least 192 flight cancellations, according to the FlightAware tracking service. Greyhound also canceled bus service between Seattle and Spokane.
The Vancouver International Airport in Canada said the storm has had “an unprecedented impact on flights” and caused mass cancellations overnight. “Travel continues to be significantly impacted this morning and we anticipate cancellations and delays to continue through the day and the week ahead,” the airport said in a statement.
A low pressure system from the Pacific Ocean combined with very cold Arctic air over British Columbia dragged temperatures down and brought up to 25 cm of snow to parts of the western province overnight, a meteorologist with Environment Canada said. (AP/Reuters)