Friday December 23, 2022 | 7:22 p.m.
The intense snowstorm that is hitting a large part of the United States these days has already caused five deaths and left more than a million people without electricity on Christmas Eve. In addition, it caused the closure of routes and airports and the rescheduling of more than 4,000 flights.
Authorities warned that conditions are very dangerous for traffic and that it is a “historic winter storm” and added that at least three people died from the storms: two in Kentucky and one in Missouri, due to car accidents and landslides. houses, and at least two others on a route in Oklahoma, according to the agency in charge of emergency management in this state.
“More than 240 million people (more than 70% of the population) are affected by weather alerts,” said the National Weather Service (NWS) in its bulletin issued this morning.
The specialized site Flightaware recorded more than 4,400 canceled flights and the most affected airports were those of Seattle, New York, Detroit, Chicago and Denver, according to the AFP news agency.
Several states, including New York, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Georgia, and North Carolina, have declared emergencies. The phenomenon extends “from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande (on the border with Mexico)”, and from the Pacific coast, in the northwest, to the Atlantic coast, in the east, say US meteorologists.
“This is really a very serious weather alert. Please take this storm very seriously,” President Joe Biden warned.
