By Rich McKay and Julia Harte
Jan 23 – Heavy snow was falling over Northwest Texas and Oklahoma City on Friday morning as a major winter storm began moving east across the U.S., bringing deadly cold and the threat of power outages and treacherously icy roads to almost half the nation’s population and prompting more than a dozen governors to declare states of emergency.
More than 150 million Americans were under some form of weather emergency notices from the National Weather Service.
Driven by a massive blast of Arctic air from Canada, the storm will move across the nation from the southern Rockies to the East Coast through early Monday, and cover much of the eastern U.S. through the weekend, forecasters said.
At least 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia had declared states of emergency as of Friday morning, activating resources and mobilizing crews to mitigate the storm’s impact by salting roads, preparing to respond to power outages, and more.
Brandon Buckingham, a meteorologist with private forecasting company AccuWeather, said snow and sleet had started to fall Thursday evening in portions of the Central Plains, and warned that there was a danger of ice accumulating on roads, trees and power lines.
“Dallas could see a half-inch of ice,” Buckingham said. “This is going to become treacherous very quickly.”
He said residents should prepare for “power outages lasting at least several days” in areas where ice accumulates, even though the storm is expected to dissipate by early Monday.
In Oklahoma City, which could see up to 12 inches of snow and a glaze of ice before the weekend is over, supervisor Morgan Mayo of the cafe Not Your Average Joe said customers were packing in on Friday morning to get out of the frigid temperatures: a low of 8 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday.
“We’re going to do our darnedest to stay open” even on Saturday when the high is expected to be just 10 degrees, Mayo said. “We have several employees who live in walking distance and are willing to brave the storm.”
In Texas, the potentially catastrophic storm recalls a 2021 ice storm that cut power to nearly 40 percent of the state’s power grid and left more than 2.7 million people without electricity for days. The storm was blamed for more than 200 deaths, most related to cold temperatures.
The state’s largest electrical grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), said it is ready for this weekend’s storm and expects “sufficient generation to meet demand this winter.”
HEADING EAST
As the storm heads east on Saturday and Sunday, upwards of a quarter-inch of ice could accumulate in Atlanta and Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina this weekend.
On Sunday, between 4 and 8 inches of snow will fall on Washington D.C., Baltimore, New York City and Boston, although snow exceeding 12 inches is likely to fall in parts of the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic.
In the nation’s capital, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser on Friday declared a state of emergency and a snow emergency to remain in effect from Saturday through Tuesday. Bowser asked the National Guard to provide high-ground-clearance vehicles to ensure first responders could effectively move through the District.
The storm represents the first major test for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office just weeks ago. He told local news station NY1 on Friday that the city’s sanitation workforce would transform “into the nation’s largest snow-fighting operation” in advance of the heavy snowfall expected on Sunday, but that the city’s schools would be open on Monday for either in-person or remote learning.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and Julia Harte in New York; editing by Donna Bryson and David Gregorio)
