A major winter storm has hit America, producing heavy snow and significant ice which is expected to last days.
Road conditions have become increasingly dangerous in the central US since Saturday, with snow in the most heavily affected regions – Kansas and northern Missouri – predicted to reach as high as 35.6cm.
Some 60 million people are under weather alerts across 30 states, with the National Weather Service warning that severe thunderstorms, with the possibility of tornadoes and hail, are also a possibility in some regions over the next few days.
Kansas, Arkansas, Kentucky and Virginia have declared states of emergency as the storm, driven by a polar vortex, moves east.
A polar vortex is an area of low pressure and cold air that swirls like a wheel around each of Earth’s two polar regions. Sometimes the Arctic polar vortex wobbles and a lobe surges south, blanketing parts of North America with bitter temperatures.
It has already led to accidents across the nation, with a fire truck, several tractor-trailers and passenger vehicles overturned west of Salina, Kansas, on Saturday, and some trucks spiralled into ditches, state highway patrol trooper Ben Gardner said.
“We are in it now,” he said in a video on social media which showed him at the scene of an accident.
To demonstrate the danger on the roads, the trooper filmed himself running onto the seemingly clear road and sliding across it for several seconds due to what appeared to be black ice.
“That’s what we’re dealing with out here, and it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse, so get off the roads,” he warned.
Freezing rain in Wichita, Kansas, led to multiple crashes on Saturday morning, authorities said, as they urged drivers to stay home if possible and watch out for emergency vehicles.
Governors in neighbouring Missouri and nearby Arkansas declared states of emergency, while snowy conditions threatened to make driving dangerous to impossible, forecasters warned.
“Please stay off the roads. Crews are seeing too many vehicles out and sliding off,” Missouri’s transportation department said on the social platform X.
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Major airlines, including American, Delta, Southwest, and United, are waiving change fees ahead of likely flight disruptions in heavily affected regions.
Temperatures were well below zero in many areas on Saturday, such as -7C to -10C in Chicago, -18C in Minneapolis, and -25C in International Falls, Minnesota, on the Canadian border.
