‘Historic’ Storm Leaves Over Two Dozen Dead, Thousands of Flights Canceled, and Hundreds of Thousands Still Without Power

Hundreds of thousands of people remained without power Monday evening and at least 29 deaths were reported following a massive winter storm that sowed chaos across much of the U.S. over the weekend.

Over 200 million people around the country were under some kind of weather alert by Sunday morning. More than a million people lost power, with outages mostly affecting homes in the South, including in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky, where large snowfall is rare. Parts of the U.S. experienced dangerously low wind chills in the minus-20s to minus-30s as Arctic air pushed south. Copenhagen, New York, saw record-breaking temperatures of -49°F, Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Sunday.

The storm’s dangerous mixture of heavy snow, sleet, ice, and bitter cold trapped many indoors over the weekend. Travel was—and still is—severely disrupted, with more than 16,000 scheduled flights canceled from Saturday through Monday, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. On Sunday, around 11,000 flights were canceled—the most in a single day since the COVID-19 pandemic. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in the D.C. area canceled all flights on Sunday, and New York’s LaGuardia Airport was closed for several hours before reopening on Sunday night.

Travelers on Monday were still grappling with disruptions in air travel: nearly 7,000 flights within, into, or out of the U.S. were delayed by that evening, and more than 5,000 were canceled, according to FlightAware.

Power outages also persisted for hundreds of thousands of people. Most of them were located in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana, though there were also thousands without power in Texas, Kentucky, and South Carolina, among several other states in the South, as of Monday evening, according to PowerOutage.com. 

Read more: Here’s Where The Highest Snowfall Totals Were Across the U.S.

President Donald Trump described the storm as “historic” on Saturday and said he had approved federal disaster declarations for several states—including South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, and West Virginia. 

By late Saturday afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that 17 states and the District of Columbia had declared weather emergencies.

“We just ask that everyone would be smart – stay home if possible,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said.

By Sunday morning, the storm began to hit New England and much of the eastern third of the United States. The National Weather Service (NWS) recorded that Boston saw as much as 15 inches of snow. More than a dozen states saw more than a foot of snow, according to NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center. Bonito Lake in New Mexico saw 31 inches of snow, Crested Butte in Colorado saw 23 inches, and Clintonville in Pennsylvania saw 20. Extreme cold conditions are expected to linger for days.

Experts warned that the storm could become particularly dangerous due to the freezing temperatures forecast to follow closely behind it. As snow turns to sleet and freezing rain, roads could be coated with ice, and powerlines could freeze.

“In the wake of the storm, communities from the Southern Plains to the Northeast will contend with bitterly cold temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills,” the NWS said in its early Sunday morning update. “This will cause prolonged hazardous travel and infrastructure impacts.”

Read more: People Are Panic Buying for the Winter Storm. An Expert Explains Why We Do It

At least 29 people across the country died during the storm, The Associated Press reported. Two people died in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, one in Austin, Texas, one in Emporia, Kansas, one in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and three people died in Tennessee—one in Crockett, one in Haywood, and another in Obion. The causes of death in most cases are still under investigation. Two people died after being run over by snowplows in Massachusetts and Ohio, the AP reported.

At least eight people were found dead outside in New York City, according to local officials, as feels-like temperatures dropped into the negatives—a season low for the area—and local leaders called for residents to stay home and to take precautions.

Zohran Mamdani, tackling his first major weather event as NYC Mayor, announced a remote learning day on Monday for the city’s schools “to keep everyone safe from hazardous weather conditions.”

“While we do not yet know their causes of death, there is no more powerful reminder of the dangers of the extreme cold, and how vulnerable how many of our neighbors are, especially homeless New Yorkers,” Mamdani said at a news conference on Sunday.

He added on social media that his teams were “scouring the streets, offering shelter to homeless New Yorkers, and helping bring people inside.”

From Atlanta to Washington D.C. to Boston, transit authorities spent much of the weekend before the storm salting roads, sidewalks, and routes, while urging residents to stay home Sunday.

Philadelphia’s public transit, the SEPTA, said in a news release that “it is possible that some services will be entirely suspended” as ice might impact infrastructure, while Atlanta’s MARTA said that the only bus routes available Sunday would be “lifeline routes” that provide direct service to medical facilities and emergency rooms.

—Chantelle Lee and Miranda Jeyaretnam contributed reporting.