Southern US winter storm snarls air travel for a second weekend
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Much of the eastern US has also been gripped by snow and severe cold.
PHOTO: ARISTIDE ECONOMOPOULOS/NYTIMES
A winter storm is dropping snow across the US South, where more than 1,500 flights have been cancelled, as the eastern US faces a continued deep freeze, threatening records all the way to south Florida and menacing citrus crops.
Winter storm warnings cover parts of southern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, the Carolinas and north-eastern Georgia as the storm builds along the southern Atlantic coast, threatening to bring 15cm to 20cm of snow across a wide area, said Mr Bob Oravec, a senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center.
The region will also be swept by winds gusting as high as 72kmh in some places.
“The storm is just getting its act together,” Mr Oravec said. “Later tonight, around midnight, the winds should really be howling on the coast and there could be some blizzard conditions on the outer banks (of North Carolina).”
The storm means a second weekend of flight delays and cancellations, but it should not be as severe as the previous round
More than 185,000 homes and businesses, mainly in Louisiana, Tennessee and Mississippi, were without power early on Jan 31, according to PowerOutage.com
In addition to the snow, much of the eastern US is gripped by severe cold, with some 186 daily records potentially being tied or broken.
Temperatures have lingered 11 deg C to 14 deg C below average for more than a week, the Weather Prediction Center said.
“The worst days for the cold are today and tomorrow,” Mr Oravec said.
Flight cancellations reached 1,577 by 7am New York time on Jan 31, with Atlanta, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham airports the hardest hit, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking company.
The cold also threatens citrus growers, with most of Polk County in central Florida, the state’s biggest producing region, within the zone expected to face below-freezing temperatures.
That county in the prior season produced nearly 30 per cent of Florida’s total orange output in terms of boxes, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The storm is expected to pull into the Atlantic, possibly just grazing the eastern tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts with about 8cm of snow, but sparing most of the north-east.
The cold will continue, however. Temperatures will moderate next week but stay below normal, Mr Oravec said. And computer forecast models point to more winter storms across the east in the coming weeks.
“The one ingredient you need if you want a big winter storm is cold air, and it looks like the cold air will continue into the middle of February,” Mr Oravec said. Bloomberg
