An intense winter storm battered much of the United States on Saturday, shutting roads and airports across the country on Christmas Eve. The climatic phenomenon affects 70% of the population of the North American country, more than 200 million people, while to date it has left more than a million people without electricity and killed at least five people.

Authorities warned that the conditions are very dangerous for traffic and that it is a “historic winter storm” and added that at least three people have died from the storms: two in Kentucky and one in the Missouri, due to car accidents and landslides. at least two others on a road in Oklahoma, according to the agency in charge of emergency management in that state.

FedEx and UPS have warned that customers may experience delivery delays during the holidays due to the impact of weather conditions in major shipping hubs.

The specialized site Flightaware has identified more than 3,290 canceled flights and the airports most affected were those of Seattle, New York, Detroit, Chicago and Denver, according to the AFP news agency.

As of Friday, more than 3,600 flights have been canceled within, to and from the United States, and the runways at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are closed indefinitely due to the ice storm, according to the agency. ANSA.

The phenomenon extends “from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande (on the border with Mexico)”, and from the Pacific coast, in the northwest, to the Atlantic coast, in the east, specify the American meteorologists.

This low pressure system causes a strong clash between a very cold air mass coming from the Arctic and a tropical mass coming from the Gulf of Mexico.

A depression is a system of low atmospheric pressure, often synonymous with bad weather: its dynamics generate updrafts that cause clouds and precipitation.

The weather forecast calls for temperatures as low as -40°C in the north of the country by noon Friday and below zero as far as the coast of Texas.

The storm was brutal, breaking several cold records: -53 degrees Celsius in western Canada, -38 in Minnesota, and further south, where temperatures tend to be more moderate this time of year : -13 in Dallas, -8 in Houston.

Telam/ALG