Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: A massive winter storm swept across a broad stretch of the United States, dumping snow and ice, plunging temperatures far below normal, knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes and forcing authorities in more than 20 states to declare emergencies, according to multiple media reports and government officials.
Nearly 190 million people — more than half the US population — were under winter weather alerts across 37 states, from the Rocky Mountains to New England. Snow, sleet and freezing rain spread from New Mexico through the Tennessee Valley, while heavier snow advanced into parts of the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic, officials said.
The storm brought dangerous cold to much of the central and eastern United States. Wind chills fell into the minus 20s and minus 30s in some regions, with temperatures running 10 to 40 degrees below seasonal averages, according to weather officials.
Power outages mounted as ice and heavy snow weighed down lines and damaged infrastructure. More than 132,000 homes across the country were without electricity on January 24, according to outage tracking data cited by US media. The hardest-hit areas were in the South and Southwest, including Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico.
Texas reported more than 57,000 customers without power on January 24 afternoon, while Louisiana had over 45,000 customers without service, roughly 2 per cent of the state’s total. Officials said outages in Louisiana were concentrated in the northern part of the state, where freezing rain and ice accumulation were most severe.
