Giant snow and ice storm hits the country

A giant winter storm is advancing Sunday toward the northeastern part of the country after dumping snow and freezing rain across much of the nation, threatening tens of millions of people with power outages, transportation chaos and below-freezing temperatures.

After lashing the southwest and central areas, the storm began to hit the densely populated mid-Atlantic and northeastern states, as a frigid air mass settled across the nation.

The National Weather Service (NWS) called the storm "unusually widespread and long-lasting," brought on by the arrival of an arctic air mass from Canada.

Customers emptied supermarket shelves in the face of NWS announcements, which predicted huge snowfall in some areas and possibly "catastrophic" ice accumulations.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that up to 240 million Americans could be affected. At least 20 states and the capital, Washington D.C., declared an emergency.

Snowfall was reported across the central part of the country, including Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, where some places were already recording 20 centimeters of accumulated snow Saturday night, the NWS said.

About 14,000 flights to or from the United States were canceled over the weekend, according to specialist site FlightAware, and thousands more were delayed.

In Texas, freezing rain lashed Dallas and temperatures dropped to -21 ºC.

In Houston, Mayor John Whitmire asked residents of the nation's fourth most populous city to take shelter Saturday night for the next 72 hours.

Authorities asked to stay at home

State officials also wanted to convey reassurance about the strength of the power grid, which suffered a general outage during the last major winter storm in 2021.

However, nearly 180,000 homes were without power early Sunday, according to tracking site poweroutage.us, with more than 45,000 outages in Texas and 67,000 in neighboring Louisiana.

The federal government announced that its offices will be closed Monday as a precaution.