Washington— An enormous winter storm with dangerous polar temperatures battered much of the United States on Monday, January 26, for the third consecutive day, causing at least 23 deaths, power outages, and thousands of flights grounded.
A frigid mass of Arctic air and potentially deadly conditions could delay the resumption of normal activities in communities from New Mexico to Maine affected by the storm, which brought a violent mix of heavy snow and winds.
The death toll rose to at least 23 due to the extreme phenomenon, according to a compilation of reports from authorities and local media, with causes including hypothermia, traffic accidents, sledding, all-terrain vehicles, and snowplows.
In New Jersey, a man was found dead in the snow with a shovel in his hand.
In New York, eight more people were found dead amid the drop in temperature, though the causes of their deaths remain under investigation.
Power began to return, but by Monday night, nearly 600,000 customers were still without service, according to the outage-tracking website Poweroutage.us.
Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, southern states less accustomed to the intense winter weather and the bitter cold forecast to continue, were especially affected.
Approximately 190 million people in the United States were under some form of extreme cold alert, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
Residents in places as far south as the Gulf Coast were expected to experience frigid temperatures overnight well into the week.
And in the Great Lakes region, people woke up to extreme temperatures that could cause frostbite within minutes.
In parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, the NWS reported overnight Monday temperatures as low as -30.6 °C, with the wind chill worsening the situation.
During the weekend, nearly half of the states received at least 30.5 cm of snow.
Bonito Lake in New Mexico accumulated the greatest total snowfall in the country over the weekend, at 78.7 cm, according to official reports.
Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell told reporters that trees were still falling under the weight of ice crusted in the Tennessee capital, sometimes cutting electricity where it had already been restored.
The city’s police and fire departments led a new task force aimed at connecting residents without power to transportation to an emergency warming shelter.
A South Carolina driver, Gary Winthorpe, described to a local news station how he drove through a dangerous stretch of road and watched a van veer into a ditch: “I was very scared,” he said.
NWS meteorologist Allison Santorelli said that recovery from this storm was particularly arduous due to the large number of states affected. The northern states, with more winter provisions, could not share their resources with the southern regions, which were less prepared.
“Many of those places do not have the means or resources to clean up after these events,” she said. “We are especially concerned for people in those areas who are without electricity,” she added.
At least 20 states and the capital, Washington, D.C., declared a state of emergency to deploy emergency personnel and resources.
The snowfalls that battered the cities left roads impassable, in addition to the cancellation of buses, trains and flights over that weekend.
Scientists say that the increase in disruptions to the polar vortex could be linked to climate change.
