No Script

Please Wait...

Ramadan Kareem...

Millions in US Northeast Brace For ‘Once-in-a-generation’ Arctic Blast

Millions in US Northeast Brace For ‘Once-in-a-generation’ Arctic Blast
folder_openAmericas... access_timeone year ago
starAdd to favorites

By Staff, Agencies

More than 15 million people in the US northeast were bracing for “once-in-a-generation” Arctic blast on Friday and Saturday, as meteorologists warned frigid weather could bring record-breaking low temperatures.

An Arctic cold front is expected to bring wind chills of -50F [-45C] in parts of northern New England, and the National Weather Service [NWS] warned dangerous wind chills were likely in an area stretching from northern Pennsylvania to Maine.

The frigid weather will continue through Saturday evening, the NWS said. The icy blast in the north-east comes after a winter storm left hundreds of thousands of Texans without power on Thursday, after ice storms killed at least 10.

In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu declared a cold emergency for Friday through Sunday and has opened warming centers so people can get out of the cold.

In an advisory, the city suggested people wear several layers of loose-fitting lightweight, warm clothing.

Record low temperatures could be set in the city, as well as in New York City, where wind gusts of 50mph were expected, and Providence, the NWS suggested in a tweet. It described the cold front as “a short-lived but impressive Arctic blast.”

In New Hampshire’s Mount Washington state park, atop the northeast’s highest peak, record-breaking wind chills of -110F [-79C] and wind speeds topping 100mph were expected.

The state warned that frostbite is possible within 15 minutes at the expected temperatures, and said hypothermia can occur within 10 minutes at -30F [-34C].

As people in the northeast braced themselves for the cold, in the south temperatures began to rise on Friday after freezing weather left 430,000 people without power on Thursday.

The failures were most widespread in Austin, where impatience was rising among 150,000 customers nearly two days after the electricity first went out, which for many also means no heat. Power failures have affected about 30% of customers in the city of nearly a million at any given time since Wednesday.

Unlike the 2021 blackouts in Texas, when hundreds of people died after the state’s electricity grid was pushed to the brink of total failure, the outages in Austin this time were largely the result of frozen equipment and ice-burdened trees and limbs falling on power lines.

The freeze has been blamed for at least 10 traffic deaths on slick roads this week in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Comments