\n<\/p>\n

AN ARCTIC BLAST that gripped much of the United States on Saturday left more than 700,000 without power, at least 16 dead from weather-related car crashes and thousands stranded due to fl<\/span>ight cancellations.<\/p>\n

Plummeting temperatures were expected to bring the coldest Christmas Eve on record, and energy systems across the country were strained by rising demand for heat and storm-related damage to transmission lines.<\/p>\n

The latest outage numbers are a sharp drop from the 1.8 million US homes and businesses left without power as of early Saturday morning, according to tracking site Poweroutage.us.<\/i><\/p>\n

Many electric companies continued to ask customers to conserve energy by not running large appliances and turning off <\/span>unneeded lights.<\/p>\n

Duke Energy by late Saturday afternoon told customers it had ended the 15-30-minute rolling blackouts across North and South Carolina that it had initiated earlier in the day until additional electricity was available.<\/span><\/p>\n

Disruptions upended daily routines and holiday plans for millions of Americans during one of the year\u2019s busiest travel periods.<\/p>\n

More than 2,700 US flights were canceled on Saturday, with total delays tallying more than 6,400, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. More than 5,000 fl<\/span>ights were canceled on Friday, FlightAware said.<\/p>\n

The American Automobile Association had estimated that 112.7 million people would venture 50 miles (80 km) or more from home between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2. But stormy weather heading into the weekend likely ended up keeping many people at home.<\/p>\n

Weather-related car accidents around the country left at least 16 dead and hundreds stranded on ice and snowbound roads, according to media reports.<\/p>\n

In Erie County, in upstate New York, about 500 motorists were stranded in their vehicles on Friday night into Saturday morning, with the National Guard called in to help with rescues, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz told media. At least one person was found dead in a car, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no place for anyone to go, everything\u2019s closed, so just stay home,\u201d he told MSNBC.<\/p>\n

Two motorists were killed, and numerous others injured, in a 50-vehicle pileup that shut down the Ohio Turnpike in both directions during a blizzard near Toledo, forcing an evacuation of stranded motorists by bus to keep them from freezing, offi<\/span>cials said.<\/p>\n

Three deaths were reported in Kentucky, where Governor Andy Beshear, on Saturday, warned residents, \u201cStay home, stay safe, stay alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it\u2019s really hard because it\u2019s Christmas Eve. But we\u2019re having dozens and dozens of accidents,\u201d he said in an online briefing. \u201cIt\u2019s simply not safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blizzard conditions remained on Saturday for Buffalo, New York, and its surrounding county on the edge of Lake Erie in far western New York where 4-to-6 feet of snow will fall by Sunday, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.<\/p>\n

The city imposed a driving ban on Friday that remained in eff<\/span>ect on Saturday, and all three Buff<\/span>alo-area border-crossing bridges were closed to inbound traffi<\/span>c from Canada.<\/p>\n

Temperatures were forecast to top out on Saturday at just 7 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-13 Celsius) in Pittsburgh, surpassing the city\u2019s previous all-time coldest Christmas Eve high of 13 F, set in 1983, the NWS said.<\/p>\n

Cities in Georgia and South Carolina \u2014 Athens and Charleston \u2014 were likewise expected to record their coldest daytime Christmas Eve high temperatures, and Washington, DC, was forecast to experience its chilliest Dec. 24 since 1989.<\/p>\n

The fl<\/span>urry of yuletide temperature records was predicted as a deep freeze sharpened by perilous wind chills enveloped much of the eastern two-thirds of the nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cold snap will persist through Christmas,\u201d said meteorologist Ashton Robinson Cook, at the NWS Weather Prediction Center.<\/p>\n

Minneapolis was the coldest spot in America on Saturday at minus-6 degrees Fahrenheit. On Christmas morning, the coldest spot will be Fargo, North Dakota at minus-20, Cook said.<\/p>\n

It will start to moderate west-to-east across America, with the high plains and Central US getting back to normal by Tuesday, but it won\u2019t warm up on the East Coast until Thursday or Friday, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor now it\u2019s staying cold,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The severe weather prompted authorities across the country to open warming centers in libraries and police stations while scrambling to expand temporary shelter for the homeless. The challenge was compounded by an infl<\/span>ux of migrants crossing the US southern border by the thousands in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

The NWS said its map of existing or impending meteorological hazards \u201cdepicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever.\u201d \u2014 Reuters<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AN ARCTIC BLAST that gripped much of the United States on Saturday left more than 700,000 without power, at least 16 dead from weather-related car crashes and thousands stranded due to flight cancellations. Plummeting temperatures were expected to bring the coldest Christmas Eve on record, and energy systems across the country were strained by rising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/US-restaurant-is-covered-in-ice-300x231-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10227,"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10226\/revisions\/10227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachbytes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}