US Winter Storms Kill 55 Across 10 States as Brutal Cold Weather and Snow Affect Millions

With the death toll now reaching 55 across 10 states, the United States braces for winter storms on both coasts, followed by another surge of brutal cold sweeping the central and eastern regions by the weekend.

The deaths occurred in the aftermath of the season’s coldest air and successive storms, bringing widespread snow and ice across the nation, CNN reported. Fourteen deaths this week in the state of Tennessee have been attributed to weather-related incidents.

“Another arctic air outbreak is forecast across much of the central and eastern U.S. through this weekend. This event will not be as frigid as the last outbreak, however, temperatures and wind chills will still be hazardous across a large part of the nation,” the US Weather Prediction Center wrote on X.

‘Million under windchill’

This week about 150 million Americans were under a windchill warning or advisory for dangerous cold and wind, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland, as an Arctic air mass spilled south and eastward across the the country.

A new winter weather advisory was issued Thursday morning for multiple regions in response to these occurrences. Earlier on Wednesday, a power line fell on a parked car in northeast Portland, Oregon, killing three people and injuring a baby during an ice storm that turned roads and mountain highways treacherous in the Pacific Northwest.

A large swath of the region was under warnings Wednesday for as much as 2.5 centimeters of ice, promising only to add to the damage wrought by a deadly, powerful storm that hit over the weekend. The warning area was reduced later in the morning to parts of southwest Washington and northwest Oregon, including Portland, and further limited to the western edge of the Columbia River Gorge in the afternoon.

Freezing rain could return to the region Thursday evening through Friday morning, the US National Weather Service said. The areas most likely to be impacted include the eastern Portland metro area and the western Columbia River Gorge. According to the US Weather Service, the next surge of arctic air, currently pushing across the Northern Plains into the Upper Mississippi Valley Thursday afternoon, will continue to surge south through the remainder of the Plains and the Mississippi Valley tonight into Friday.

“This cold air will then sweep into the eastern U.S. on Saturday. While not as cold as the previous arctic outbreak that produced numerous records across the Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley last week, this next surge will result in high temperatures 20 to 25 degrees below average on Friday across much of the Plains and Mississippi Valley,” it added.

(With agency inputs)