US braces for ‘extremely dangerous’ winter storm

More than 160 million Americans are expected to face an unusually brutal winter storm starting Friday, with heavy snows and freezing rains forecast.

The storm is expected to sweep through much of the United States, leaving “extremely dangerous” conditions in its wake as it tracks eastwards from the High Plains and Rockies, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

It warned that the Arctic blast will bring sub-zero temperatures and wind chills, which “pose a life-threatening risk of hypothermia and frostbite to exposed skin”.

US transportation officials, including airport authorities in several major cities, have warned of weekend travel disruption, delays and cancellations.

The winter storm is forecast to move slowly across the US, blanketing cities including Memphis, Nashville, Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York with snow.

Heavy snow is predicted through the Southern Rockies and Plains, into the Mid-Atlantic and reaching the Northeast.

According to the NWS Probabilistic Precipitation Portal, the regions that could see more than a foot of snow stretch from Colorado to West Virginia to Boston.

Parts of northeast New Jersey and southeast New York, including New York City, could see between 10 and 14 inches of snow starting early on Sunday and lasting through Monday, the NWS predicts. And windchills as low as -10F (-23C) are expected for the same region from Friday evening to Saturday afternoon, the service says.

Most of southern New England, including Boston, can expect between 12 and 17 inches of snow and wind gusts up to 30mph from Sunday into Monday, NWS says. Wind chill temperatures there could reach -15F (-26C) Friday into Saturday.

Numerous low temperature records are likely to be broken, according to the NWS, with the coldest wind chills potentially falling below -50F (-46C) across the Northern Plains.

A much wider area of the south-eastern US is also forecast to experience freezing temperatures.

Governors in several US states, including Arkansas, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, have declared states of emergency, allowing emergency officials – including National Guard troops – to begin mobilising response efforts.

In a press conference on Friday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the state has over 1,600 snow plows and 114,000 tonnes of salt on hand for the storm, which she said will leave no corner of the state “immune from feeling the effect of Mother Nature’s wrath”.

Hochul urged residents to work from home, stock up on groceries and essentials ahead of time and be careful when shoveling snow, which can increase the risk of a heart attack.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Friday the city will be deploying thousands of sanitation workers this weekend, 700 salt spreaders and 2,200 snow plows once two inches of snow have accumulated. While subways and buses will be operational this weekend, he urged New Yorkers to stay home if they can.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Thursday there’s “no expectation whatsoever” that the state’s power grid will fail, as it did during a major storm in 2021 which led to hundreds of deaths in the state.

There may be some local power outages due to falling ice and snow, he said, but stressed that this would be different from a large-scale grid failure.

“The local power providers have never been more prepared for any winter storm ever,” Abbott said.

Some airlines have offered passengers the option to change their flights, in some cases without incurring extra fees, due to concerns about cancellations.

Motorists should avoid driving across the weekend, with travel expected to be “nearly impossible during the peak of the storm”, NWS meteorologists Rich Otto and Tony Fracasso told the BBC’s US news partner CBS.

Meanwhile in Canada, freezing temperatures are already gripping the country, with snowfall expected in eastern and Atlantic regions on Monday, meteorologist Geoff Coulson told CBC earlier in the week.

Even after the storm passes through the US this weekend, a strong arctic air mass originating in Canada will keep temperatures frigid in the eastern US into next week, according to the NWS Weather Prediction Center.

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