US cities brace for coldest Christmas Eve on record
An arctic blast gripped much of the United States on Saturday driving power outages, flight cancellations and car wrecks, as plummeting temperatures were predicted to bring the coldest Christmas Eve on record to several cities from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Temperatures are forecast to top out on Saturday at just (minus 13 Celsius in Pittsburgh, surpassing its previous all-time coldest Christmas Eve low set in 1983, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. Cities in Georgia and South Carolina – Athens and Charleston – were likewise expected to record their coldest daytime Christmas Eve high temperatures, while Washington – was forecast to experience its chilliest December 24 since 1989. The flurry of yuletide temperature records were predicted as a US deep freeze sharpened by perilous wind chills continued to envelope much of the eastern two-thirds of the nation into the holiday weekend. The freeze already produced fatal car collisions around the country with CNN reporting at least 14 dead from weather-related accidents. The arctic cold combined with a "cyclone bomb" of heavy snow and howling winds roaring out of the Great Lakes region on Friday and into the Upper Mississippi and Ohio valleys wreaked havoc on power systems, roadways and commercial air traffic. Extreme winter weather was blamed for at least five deaths on Friday. Two motorists were killed, and numerous others injured, in a 50-vehicle pileup that shut down the Ohio Turnpike in both directions during a blizzard near Toledo, forcing an evacuation of stranded motorists by bus to keep them from freezing in their cars, officials said. Three more weather-related fatalities were confirmed in neighbouring Kentucky – two from car accidents and one a homeless person who died of exposure. Freezing rain and ice from a separate storm in the Pacific Northwest made travel treacherous there as well on Friday. (Reuters)