WASHINGTON: A life-threatening freeze is gripping large swaths of the United States after a monster storm caused at least 38 deaths from the Deep South to the Northeast, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and sent air travel into chaos.
Another Arctic blast expected this weekend could deliver fresh misery for more than 100 million Americans, with record low temperatures and another major storm threatening — even as municipalities are digging out from deep piles of snow and ice.
Here's what to know.
The storm was linked to more than three dozen deaths, according to a compilation of state government and local media reports, with causes including hypothermia as well as accidents related to traffic, sledding, all-terrain vehicles and snowplows.
Three Texas siblings age six to nine died Monday after falling through ice on a pond north of Dallas, authorities said.
The storm toll is expected to climb after New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Tuesday at least 10 New Yorkers who died had been found outdoors in extreme cold, though whether all the deaths were from hypothermia has yet to be determined.
In Bangor, Maine, seven people were killed when a small plane crashed while attempting to take off during a snowstorm, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana were badly impacted by power outages, with nearly half a million homes and businesses still without electricity as of Tuesday night, according to tracking site Poweroutage.com.
Air travel was also severely disrupted. More than 24,500 US flights, a staggering number, were cancelled between Saturday and Tuesday as the storm paralysed transportation across the country, according to website FlightAware.
Heavy snowfall
The heaviest snowfall of 31 inches (79 centimetres) occurred in Bonito Falls, New Mexico on the western edge of the colossal storm — followed by East Napanoch in upstate New York, where 30 inches fell, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
In Boston, residents were digging out Tuesday after the Massachusetts metropolis got walloped by more than 23 inches of snow.
Many of the hardest-hit areas were in the South, where authorities are less accustomed — and often less equipped — to deal with severe winter weather.
In the Gulf Coast state of Mississippi, for example, several towns were covered in thick and treacherous ice which downed power lines and trees, and made roads impassable.
The NWS warns that much of the northern half of the country will remain continuously below freezing through February 1, with another blast of Arctic air expected to bring "the coldest temperature seen in several years for some places and the longest duration of cold in decades."
It said regions as far south as Florida should prepare for "hard freezes."
At the same time, a potentially significant winter storm could spill out of Canada along the East Coast, spreading widespread precipitation as a low-pressure system collides with frigid air. Forecasters say it is still too early to determine the storm's exact track, or whether it will fall as rain or snow.
It may sound counterintuitive, but a growing body of research suggests climate change could be playing a role in disruptions to the polar vortex — a vast region of cold, low-pressure air that normally circulates high above the Arctic.
Scientists advancing this theory argue that uneven Arctic warming across Europe and Asia can amplify large atmospheric waves, making it more likely for the polar vortex to wobble and spill south over North America.
The science, however, remains contested, and researchers caution that natural climate variability also plays a role.
