Winter storm 'Elliott' wreaks havoc just hours before Christmas celebrations

Winter storm Elliott has made it stateside and people are starting to feel its impact. Power outages, car accidents and long road delays are just a few of the consequences of this bombogenesis.

As reported by PowerOutrage.us on Friday, more than 1.5 million Americans saw their homes go completely dark as bad weather conditions caused power outages across the country.

The website shows that most of these outages occurred in the eastern part of the country. People are being affected around the country. The biggest outages are currently affecting 437,385 people in North Carolina; 304,800 people in Tennessee; 237,585 in Maine; 96,295 in Alabama; and 78,090 New York, according to the website on Dec. 24, at 2 p.m. EST.

Tennessee is the most affected state

Although Elliott is making its way across the country, the state that has had the most problems since the storm began is Tennessee. There, Just the news reports, with a temperature of 9º Fahrenheit, several outages were detected in some of the region's infrastructure. In fact, in Memphis, the electric, gas and water utility company announced that they were in a "critical power supply situation," due to bad weather conditions.

Because of this, the Tennessee Valley Authority ordered all local power companies to apply a 5-10% reduction to their electric load to avoid major outages in their service area. However, residents of the state could experience continuous power outages, averaging at least twice a day, which will complicate Christmas dinner preparations.

More than a dozen deaths on the roads

Bad weather is also affecting the roads and the number of people killed in car accidents continues to rise. Eleven people have died in several traffic accidents that took place in Kansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Ohio.

The most concerning accident was a 46 car pileup in Ohio. The Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) confirmed that four people were killed in the accident m. Agents spent most of the night at the scene doing rescue work.

OSHP spokesman Sgt. Ryan Purpura said the accident is under investigation. However, everything points to weather as the cause. Purpura advised drivers who are forced to travel to "to take some precautions: take it slow, be patient, increase your following distance, and always buckle up."

After learning what had happened, the governor of Ohio, Republican Mike DeWine, issued a statement in which he gave his sincere condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the accident while, at the same time, recommending that citizens stay at home as much as possible: