States across the US are bracing for a life-threatening cold snap brought on by freezing winds blowing down from the Arctic.
Forecasters, even in the usually balmy southern states, are predicting potentially "record-low temperatures" leading up to Christmas.
Local authorities are preparing for ice bound rounds and power outages, even as the North East region is getting back on its feet following an earlier storm.
Tens of thousands of people were left without power in New England and New York states. In Vermont, officers responded to over 80 car crashes on Friday and drivers still using the roads were advised to slow down and stay safe.
“We’re looking at much-below normal temperatures, potentially record-low temperatures leading up to the Christmas holiday,” said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The incoming Arctic front brings “extreme and prolonged freezing conditions for southern Mississippi and southeast Louisiana”, the National Weather Service in a special weather statement Sunday.
By Thursday night, temperatures will plunge as low as 13F (-10.6C) in Jackson, Mississippi; and around 5F (-15C) in Nashville, Tennessee, the National Weather Service predicted.
For much of the US, the winter weather will get worse before it gets better.
This week has the potential for “the coldest air of the season” as the strong Arctic front marches across the eastern two-thirds of the country in the days before Christmas, according to the latest forecasts from the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
The center warned of a “massive expanse of frigid temperatures from the Northern Rockies/Northern Plains to the Midwest through the middle of the week, and then reaching the Gulf Coast and much of the Eastern US by Friday and into the weekend.”
In Atlanta, temperatures will drop to 13F (-10.6C) on Friday night with the high temperature Saturday still below the freezing mark at around 29F (-1.7C), the Weather Service projects.
Freezing temperatures can be deadly, particularly for homeless people.
Earlier this year Atlanta homeless advocate George Chidi went to check on a woman with severe mental health issues in downtown Atlanta earlier this year, and found she had died of suspected hypothermia just hours earlier.
Her body was found outside the Greyhound bus station, which is open 24 hours in the heart of downtown Atlanta, he said.
“She died within 100 feet of three heated buildings,” Chidi said.
He said people without housing who die in freezing weather often do so because they are battling alcohol, drugs or severe mental illness, or they do not trust others and find themselves on the streets rather than a shelter with other people.
Homeless people in southern states are also vulnerable to its weather patterns that make it comfortable one week, but suddenly freezing the next.
“A main factor isn’t the temperature itself,” Chidi said. “It’s the speed with which the temperature drops.”
In February 2021 when Storm Uri covered the southern US in a cold wave, millions were left without power
The infrastructure inadequately prepared for the cold couldn't meet demand and many people had no electricity for days.
