MEMPHIS, TN– Forecasters warned that frigid conditions would continue into Monday morning for a large swath of the United States from the Gulf Coast to New England that had been cleaning up after the weekend. Bomb hurricane It brought heavy snow and flight cancellations to North Carolina and flurries and iguana shedding in Florida.
Temperatures will begin to rise throughout the day, but more misery is expected for thousands still without power due to last month’s ice storm in the South.
About 150 million people were under Cold Weather Warnings and Extreme Cold Warnings Sunday, in the eastern part of the United States, with single-digit temperatures in the southern states and the coldest air mass in South Florida since December 1989, said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.
The National Weather Service office in Raleigh, North Carolina, warned that wind chills would drop early Monday to near zero Fahrenheit (-17 Celsius). “Snow and ice will persist, with a renewed freeze tonight making travel dangerous,” the office said Sunday on social media. “Be careful on the roads and wear warm clothes.”
In eastern North Carolina, James City recorded 18 inches (45 cm) of snow, while Swansboro recorded 17 inches (43 cm), the weather service reported.
The bomb cyclone, known to meteorologists as an intense, fast-strengthening weather system, destroyed nearly a foot (30 cm) of Snow in and around Charlottethe largest city in North Carolina. The snowfall marks the top five snow events on record there, Mullinax said.
Flight cancellations topped 2,800 in the U.S. on Saturday, with at least 1,800 more on Sunday, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking and data company. More than 800 of those cancellations Sunday were for flights departing or arriving at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
The storm caused hours of chaos on Interstate 85 northeast of the city, after a crash left dozens of tractors and other vehicles stuck Saturday evening, according to the State Highway Patrol. North Carolina Governor Josh Stein said on Sunday that more than 1,000 traffic collisions and two deaths had been reported on the roads.
“It’s definitely an impressive cold snap, and there are daily records being set in the South,” Mullinax said.
tampa st. The St. Petersburg area in Florida saw snow flurries, while temperatures dropped to the 20s in the Panhandle and the 30s in South Florida on Sunday. This left the cold-stunned iguana lying motionless on the ground. Iguanas in South Florida hibernate due to the cold, and although they usually wake up when temperatures rise, they can die after more than a day of extreme cold.
The cold also left ice on strawberries and oranges in the state. Farmers in Florida sometimes spray water on fruit trees and berry plants to protect them from the cold.
More than 110 deaths related to winter weather and storms have been reported across the United States since late January. In Tennessee and Mississippi, two states hit by a previous storm packing snow and ice, more than 81,000 customers remain on alert. Without electricity By Sunday evening, according to the outage tracking website poweroutage.us.
Nashville Electric Service said it expects power to be restored to 90% of its customers on Tuesday, with power restored to 99% by next Sunday, two weeks after the previous storm. Gov. Bill Lee said he shared “strong concerns” with the facility’s leadership, which defended its response and said the storm was unprecedented.
Mississippi officials said this was the worst in the state Winter storm Since 1994. About 80 warming centers have opened and National Guard troops have delivered supplies by truck and helicopter.
Jamita Washington, a resident of Vicksburg, Mississippi, said she lost power in the previous storm and spent three nights in a hotel with her son before power was restored Thursday.
However, one of her ovens froze over and she has had to sleep on the living room sofa since returning home to freezing temperatures at night.
“It was frustrating, but I look at it this way: There are people in a worse situation than us,” she said. “I know a few homeless people, so I look at it like we’re technically lucky.”
In Kitty Hawk, located on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Susan Sawin said her house was exposed to a “huge” amount of snow and strong winds that reminded her of the eastern light.
“The wind was blowing like crazy,” said 63-year-old Sawin. “The wind was roaring…the house shook.”
She had about 2 feet (0.6 meters) of snow drifting outside her house, but she didn’t lose power. Sawin said she was grateful there was adequate warning from officials before the “bomb cyclone.”
“That’s what it felt like with the wind and snow last night,” she said. “That’s an accurate description.”
The owner of three bookstores, she closed her business over the weekend and plans to remain closed on Monday as well.
“We rarely close for an entire day,” she said. “Last August, we had a hurricane, and I think we opened our store late one day. It’s unusual for us to be closed for three days in a row.”
Also in North Carolina, officials said an unoccupied beachfront home in the Buxton community on Hatteras Island collapsed in heavy surf on Sunday.
Parts of the Carolinas will “drill” for several days as they face gusty winds and extremely cold chills, Mullinax said. He added that as Tuesday and Wednesday approach, light snow may fall in the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic, from Washington and possibly to New York City.
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Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, Tran Nguyen in Sacramento, California, Julie Walker in New York and other Associated Press reporters from around the country contributed to this report.