A powerful winter storm kept pummeling the United States on Christmas Eve with dangerously cold temperatures and heavy snow – leaving in its wake fatal car crashes, thousands of canceled flights and over a million homes and businesses without power.
The massive footprint of the winter weather and its timing during a busy holiday travel week makes the arctic blast particularly dangerous. The National Weather Service on Friday said its warnings and advisories covered about 200 million people – “one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever,” forecasters said.
Nationwide, officials have attributed at least a dozen deaths to the storm.
In Ohio, dozens of vehicles were involved in a pileup that killed at least 4. In the Buffalo, New York, area – which received stunning records of rain and snowfall on Friday – two people died in their homes after emergency responders couldn’t reach them amid the city’s historic blizzard conditions.
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The dangers are often localized and not limited to snowfall. In New York, blizzard conditions created whiteouts and stranded motorists on the state’s western side while flooding prompted water rescues on the eastern side.
Meanwhile, bone-numbing wind chills extended throughout the country. Every state in the contiguous U.S. will experience…
