Saturday December 24, 2022 | 8:30 a.m.
More than a million people have been left without electricity in various states of the United States due to a strong winter storm that is hitting the country and that has left temperatures below freezing.
Most of the blackouts have been concentrated in the Northeast region of the United States, which includes states such as New York, Maine, New Hampshire or Connecticut, and where more than 860,000 people have lost access to electricity, according to the Poweroutage portal. .
Specifically, 534,000 people have suffered power outages in the New England region, which includes states such as Maine (250,000), New Hampshire (100,000), Massachusetts (68,000) or Connecticut (50,000).
Likewise, in the Atlantic half of the country there are more than 330,000. In New York, 90,000 have suffered a blackout, in Pennsylvania the figure is 80,000, while in Virginia or Maryland there are more than 60,000 customers without electricity.
The National Weather Service of the United States (NWS, for its acronym in English) reported a major winter storm in progress will bring heavy snow and strong winds to the country through Saturday, affecting 200 million Americans.
A large number of states in the United States registered temperatures below zero on Friday as a large icy storm advanced over the territory.
The phenomenon, caused by an arctic air front, will be responsible for the country experiencing its coldest Christmas since the 1980s.
About 10 people, so far, have died on the roads since the storm began in the states of Kansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Ohio.
In other places, like Chicago, Illinois, or Nashville, Tennessee, roads were clogged for hours as temperatures dropped, rain turned to ice and the wind blew into blizzards.
In Denver (Colorado) Thursday was the second coldest day since records were kept: the average temperature was 26 degrees below zero.
Transportation problems also affected trains and bus companies such as Greyhound, the largest of which has already warned that many routes in the Northeast or Midwest may be canceled or altered.
Airlines canceled more than 4,400 flights on Friday because of a severe winter storm that hampered airport operations in several regions and frustrated thousands of holiday travelers.
