Temperatures dropped rapidly on Thursday as a winter storm formed ahead of the Christmas weekend that will bring heavy snow, flooding and high winds to a wide swath of the country, complicating holiday travel.
The National Weather Service reported that temperatures in the Central High Plains dropped 50 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few hours. In much of the country, the Christmas weekend could be the coldest in decades.
“This is not like a snow day when you were a kid,” President Joe Biden said Thursday in the Oval Office after a briefing by federal officials. “It is something serious”.
Frigid air will move eastward across the central United States, with wind chill advisories affecting about 135 million people in the coming days, weather service meteorologist Ashton Robinson Cook said Thursday.
Forecasters expect what is known as a bomb cyclone to develop when air pressure drops very rapidly into a strong storm near the Great Lakes. This will increase the winds and create blizzard conditions, Cook said.
Roads in rural stretches of western South Dakota were already blocked, leaving people stranded with dwindling supplies of food and heating sources.
The cold weather has spread to El Paso and across the border to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where migrants have been camping outside or filling shelters as they await a decision on whether the United States will lift restrictions that have prevented many from seeking asylum. .
More than 1,700 flights into, into or out of the United States were canceled Thursday morning. Chicago O’Hare and Denver airports were the most affected. Freezing rain forced Delta to halt departures from its hub in Seattle.
Meanwhile, Amtrak has canceled service on more than 20 rail routes, mostly in the Midwest. Service between Chicago and Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit, and St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri has been suspended.
