Roving Periscope: ‘Bomb cyclone’ forecast panics 200 mn people in the US, Canada

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: A record-breaking, once-in-a-generation snowstorm is freezing the USA and Canada on Christmas.

A day ahead of Christmas, as millions of people packed bags to celebrate the world’s biggest festival and holiday season, a deep freeze gripped the United States and Canada, where the forecast of an arctic ‘bomb cyclone’ panicked nearly 200 million people in North America with numbing cold intensified by high winds expected to extend as far south as the US-Mexico border.

Ultra-low temperatures—touching up to minus 48 degrees at some places—enveloped most of the US and Canada early on Friday itself, combined with a massive winter storm brewing in the Midwest to leave over two-thirds of the nations under extreme weather alerts, the media reported on Saturday.

Over 5,000 flights from and to the US and Canada have been canceled indefinitely, leaving millions of travelers stranded.

The looming storm, predicted to hit North America on the eve of Christmas, could develop into a ‘bomb cyclone,’ unleashing heavy, blinding snow from the northern Plains and Great Lakes region to the upper Mississippi Valley and western New York.

Hard-freeze warnings were posted across the Gulf Coast states of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, while significant icing was possible from a separate arctic blast hitting the Pacific Northwest, the reports said.

By Thursday evening, most of the Lower 48 States, from Washington State to Florida, were already under wind-chill alerts, blizzard warnings, or other winter weather advisories affecting about two-thirds of the US population, the National Weather Service (NWS) reported.

The NWS map of existing or impending wintry hazards, stretching from border to border and coast to coast, “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever,” the weather service warned.

The bomb cyclone could unleash snowfalls of half an inch (1.25 cm) per hour driven by gale-force winds, cutting visibility to near zero, the agency said.

Combined with the arctic cold, the NWS said that wind-chill factors as low as 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 40 Celsius) were forecast in the High Plains, the northern Rockies, and the Great Basin. Exposure to such conditions without adequate protection can cause frostbite within minutes.

Power outages were expected from high winds, heavy snow, and ice, as well as the strain of higher-than-usual energy demands.

One of the biggest immediate impacts, even before the storm fully took shape, was the upending of commercial air traffic during the busy holiday travel period.

Over 5,000 US flights, scheduled for Thursday and Friday, were canceled, with two major airports in Chicago accounting for nearly 1,300 of the cancellations.

The American Automobile Association had estimated that 112.7 million people planned to travel within the US during the Christmas holidays but were now uncertain because of treacherous weather.

US President Joe Biden urged Americans to think twice about venturing out after Thursday, calling the gathering storm “dangerous and threatening.”

“This is not like a snow day when you were a kid. This is serious stuff,” he said in comments at the White House on Thursday.

The extreme cold also posed a particular hazard to livestock in ranching-intensive regions of the country. Tyson Foods Inc, the nation’s leading meat producer by sales, said it had scaled back operations to protect employees and animals.