Winter storm hits and disrupts travel

About 120,000 customers in the United States were left without power on Monday afternoon, according to portal PowerOutage.us, mainly in West Virginia and the southeastern states of North and South Carolina and Georgia.

Transportation was severely affected with thousands of flights canceled and part of I-95 closed in North Carolina.

Approximately 1,600 flights within, from or from United State They were canceled as of noon last Monday, adding to the 3,000 cancellations the day before, according to the FlightAware monitoring site.

North Carolina’s Charlotte Douglas International Airport was the hardest hit, with 1,200 flights canceled, more than 90% of scheduled flights.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said “wind speeds will slowly decrease,” but snow will continue to fall in Upper New York and New England.

The agency said that the largest snowfall of 66 cm was recorded in Ashtabula, Ohio.

The NWS warned in a tweet that “significant impacts of snow, ice, wind and coastal flooding will continue across a vast area.”

the Storm It caused hurricane damage in Florida, while in the Carolinas and the upper Appalachians, weather conditions are causing concern.

Strong winds toppled trees and caused flooding, with a gust of 3.6 meters reported in Boston.

in a Canada, a large part of the provinces of Quebec and Ontario are still affected by the snowstorm or warning of strong winds, according to the website of the government of that country.

In Toronto, about 60 cm of snow was expected.

“Historic storm for the city,” tweeted Anthony Farnell, chief meteorologist for Canada’s Global News Channel.

In the same city, police tweeted that they had to close two sections of the highway due to the freezing cold and asked drivers to stay home.

Many schools were closed and school buses were not operating in Quebec and southern Ontario, including the Toronto area. Students were scheduled to return to classrooms in both counties on Monday after recess.

Emergency

Drivers have warned of dangerous road conditions as well as major travel problems from Arkansas in the southern United States to Quebec in Canada.

“We are seeing many vehicles needing to stop and defrost their windshields,” Quebec’s transport minister said in a tweet on Monday.

“Heavy rain and high winds allow ice to form despite the windshield wipers, which is all the more reason to stay home,” he added.

US officials have also discouraged driving in several states and deployed emergency response teams, especially in the south where snow is much less common.

Last Monday was a holiday across the United States, so schools and many businesses were closed. However, many drivers take advantage of the long weekend to travel.

The United States already experienced winter chaos due to heavy snowfall earlier this month, after a storm blanketed large areas in the Northeast, with hundreds of drivers stranded for more than 24 hours on I-95, a highway hub connecting with Washington.

Source: Source: AFP.