Another East Coast Storm Brewing After Widespread Power Outages
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Another winter storm system may hit the East Coast this weekend, just days after a major storm brought widespread power outages due to ice and snow across a broad swath of the eastern United States.
“Forecasts are being monitored for increasing potential of another significant winter storm to impact the eastern United States this coming weekend,” the National Weather Service (NWS) said on Jan. 27.
The NWS added that “well below normal temperatures” will continue for the eastern part of the United States for this week, predicting yet “another blast of arctic air” that will spread from the Plains states to the East Coast, including the South, on Friday and Saturday. Record low temperatures are to be expected, including in Florida.
At least 30 people have died due to the storm and cold, authorities in multiple states confirmed as of Monday evening. In New York City, at least five people were found dead outside amid freezing temperatures, with causes under investigation but possibly attributed to hypothermia, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said.
Louisiana officials said two men died of hypothermia in Caddo Parish, while two teenagers perished in sledding accidents in Arkansas and Texas. In Emporia, Kansas, a K-9 police team found a schoolteacher dead, covered in snow.
More than 500,000 people were without power, mostly across the southern United States, according to a Tuesday morning update from tracking website Poweroutage.us.
Tennessee had 170,000 outages, while Mississippi reported 140,000 and Louisiana 99,000 due to an icy snowstorm that hit the region this past weekend, the site shows.
Other states with thousands of outages include Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina.
The United States had more than 12,000 flight delays or cancellations nationwide on Monday, according to flight tracker Flightaware.com. As of Tuesday morning, roughly 1,700 cancellations across the country and another 2,600 delays were reported.
New York City had its snowiest day in years, with 8 to 15 inches of snow. Although public schools shut down, roughly 500,000 students were told to log in for online lessons on Monday. The nation’s largest public school system stripped away snow days after remote learning gained traction during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee suffered widespread damage to power infrastructure, with areas such as New Albany, Mississippi, facing one week without power. Mississippi deployed 200,000 gallons of ice-melting chemicals on roads, a state record.
Robyn Tannehill, mayor of Oxford, Mississippi, described a catastrophic situation in her city in a social media post.
“It looks like a tornado went down every street,” she wrote on Facebook on Jan. 25. “There is no safe means of travel on the roads right now.”
The mayor added that the city is unable to transport students at the University of Mississippi, known as Ole Miss, who live off-campus or reside in shelters.
“We begged people to prepare and I am so sorry for those who didn’t but it is impossible for us to get to everyone in these conditions as much as we wish we could,” Tannehill wrote. “We’re going to wake up and do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.”
The Associated Press and Kimberly Hayek contributed to this report.