A massive winter storm has nearly half of the US under weather warnings as some regions are expected to receive the most snowfall in 10 years.
Winter Storm Blair pounded the Midwest and moved east to the Mid-Atlantic with snow, ice and freezing wind on Monday.
The National Guard was activated to assist motorists in Kansas, areas of Indiana and western Nebraska, where snow clogged roads.
Blizzards hit Kansas and Missouri with wind gusts reaching 45mph and winter storm warnings have been issued in New Jersey through early Tuesday.
‘For locations in this region that receive the highest snow totals, it may be the heaviest snowfall in at least a decade,’ stated the Natonal Weather Service.
Blair has enveloped a roughly 1,000-mile stretch of the US in wintry precipitation from central Missouri to Delaware.
At least four people had died as of Monday afternoon. Two were killed in a single-vehicle crash in Sedgwick County, Kansas, on Sunday evening around the same time that an inividua died in Missouri. Another person died in Missori after hitting a dump truck on an icy road.
On Monday morning, the greatest intensity was felt in Washington, DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia, as the storm dumped up to a foot of snow. It was the biggest snowstorm in the region since January 2022 or even dating back to January 2019.
Conditions were so severe that thousands of flights were canceled or delayed in central, East Coast and southern states and some government offices and schools closed.
Almost 300,000 customers lost power early Monday in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia and West Virginia, PowerOutage.us showed.
An extremely cold front is expected to drive temperatures down to 12 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit in the eastern two-thirds of the nation.
Over the weekend, hundreds of car accidents occurred in Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky and Virginia. In Kentucky, a state trooper’s patrol car was struck and he suffered non-life-threatening injuries. And in Missouri, at least 600 drivers were stranded.
Light snow is forecast to reach the Central Rockies late Monday, the Southern Rockies by Tuesday and the Central and Southern High Plains by the evening.
President Joe Biden was ‘closely monitoring the severe winter weather’ and is prepared to provide federal help to states in need, stated a White House spokesperson.
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