Americans hunker down, help each other under blizzard and brutal cold
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Flights were cancelled, schools were shut and volunteers staffed emergency shelters.
PHOTO: REUTERS
TULSA, Oklahoma – Tens of millions of Americans hunkered down on Jan 26 or ventured out to help neighbours under bitter cold, blizzards of snow and lashings of freezing rain from a huge winter storm that paralysed the eastern United States.
From New York and Massachusetts in the north-east to Texas and North Carolina in the south, roads were frozen slick with ice and buried under often more than a foot of snow.
In some southern states, residents faced winter conditions unseen in those areas for decades, with inch-thick ice coating branches, bringing down trees and power lines.
Flights were cancelled, schools were shut and volunteers staffed emergency shelters to provide warmth for the needy and homeless.
“I just saw a need for getting people out of the cold,” said Mr Ryan DuVal, who owns a vintage fire truck and was driving it through the frozen streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, looking for people who needed help.
“You know, just cruise the streets, see someone, offer a ride. If they take it, great. If not, I can at least warm them up in the truck and just get them a water, meal, something. And it’s just giving back to the community like everybody should do.”
Winter storm warnings covered 118 million people. An estimated 157 million were warned to bundle up against the cold, ranging from sub-zero 18 deg C along the Canadian border to below freezing as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.
While the storm system was expected to drift away from the East Coast into the Atlantic on Jan 26, more Arctic air was forecast to rush in behind it, prolonging bitter cold, icy conditions over the next few days, the National Weather Service said.
Its morning forecast on Jan 26 predicted more heavy snow in the north-east, with snow also in the Appalachians and rain, some of it freezing, in the mid-Atlantic and along the south-east coast.
Deep snow, thick ice
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she had mobilised National Guard troops in New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley to assist with the state’s emergency storm response.
Announcing that schools would be shut for a remote school day, New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani quipped: “I know that this may disappoint some students, so if you do see me, feel free to throw a snowball at me.”
The onslaught of snow, ice and winds hit air travel especially hard, with major carriers forced to cancel more than 11,000 US flights scheduled for Jan 25, according to industry tracking service FlightAware. More cancellations and delays were expected on Jan 26, though not quite as severe.
According to PowerOutage.us, more than 820,000 electricity customers were without power as at 4am local time on Jan 26 across a swathe of southern states from Texas to Virginia. The worst hit was Tennessee, accounting for nearly a third of the outages.
Calling the storm “historic”, President Donald Trump on Jan 24 approved federal emergency disaster declarations for a dozen states, mostly in the mid-south.
Still, despite the emergency and the danger, the winter conditions were fun for many, including in Washington DC, where a huge crowd gathered for a raucous impromptu snowball fight in Meridian Hill Park, with one man wearing an astronaut space suit.
Families brought sleds to Capitol Hill, where children zoomed down the steep slope below the white-domed seat of the US Congress.
“It’s beautiful. It’s so fun to go down Capitol Hill. It was great powder this morning. Getting a little sleety now but we’re having a great time!” said a man who pushed his daughter down the hill on a purple plastic sled. REUTERS
