A massive winter storm snarled Christmas travel across much of the central US as freezing rain and heavy snow grounded flights and made driving treacherous.
“There’s just a humongous storm moving across the center of the country, basically from the Canadian border to Texas and spreading from west Colorado to Illinois,” National Weather Service spokesman Pat Slattery said. “Christmas travel is going to be very difficult.”
The northern parts of the storm were expected to drop up to 60cm of snow while flood warnings were issued along the southern portion of the storm.
A tornado was also spotted touching down in Texas.
“We would recommend that people if at all possible postpone their travel plans just to be on the safe side,” Slattery said in a telephone interview. “This is not a storm to be messed with.”
Freezing rain will make driving extremely dangerous — especially after dark when the rain turns to ice — and high winds will dramatically reduce visibility, Slattery said. “If they can wait a couple days, the snow will be there, but it won’t be blowing sideways anymore.”
More than 260 flights were canceled at Chicago airports on Wednesday due to icy conditions and heavy, wet snow and sleet.
Train service was also interrupted for three hours at New York’s Penn Station due to a power outage which disrupted travel from Niagara Falls to Washington. Teacher Elana Hiller managed to get home to Chicago from Minneapolis, but only after heading into the airport eight hours early to switch to a morning flight.
“The airports were crazy,” she told rporters. “The lineups at security were going all the way down from one end of the terminal to another.”
United Airlines said it is doing its best to make sure people manage to get home for the holidays.
“We’re trying to stay ahead of the storm rather than behind it,” spokeswoman Sarah Massier said. “We knew it’s a holiday and it’s very important for these customers to be home for the holidays.”
The airline — like most of its competitors — will automatically rebook passengers on the next available flight following a cancellation and try to get in touch by phone or e-mail to help people plan ahead.
But with flights already heavily booked for one of the busiest travel days of the year, painful delays and disappointment appears inevitable. The governor of South Dakota issued a state of emergency and urged residents to stay off the roads after the weather service warned of a “life-threatening storm” that would not clear up until today.
“If you can leave ahead of the storm and get where you are going, great,” South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds said on Tuesday before the storm hit.
“If you can’t, it’s better to be safe than stranded somewhere. The best gift to give your loved ones is to be safe,” he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of