INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Millions of people have hunkered down against a deep freeze on Christmas Day to ride out the winter storm that has killed at least 29 people
across the US.The storm is expected to claim more lives after trapping some residents inside houses with heaping snow drifts and knocking
out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.The scope of the storm has been nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes
near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico.About 60 per cent of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory
or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather
including heavy winds and snow.Some 1707 domestic and international flights were cancelled on Sunday as of about 2pm on the east coast,
according to the tracking site FlightAware.The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, with hurricane-force winds and snow causing
whiteout conditions, paralysing emergency response efforts.New York Governor Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was
stranded Saturday.Officials said the airport would be shut through Tuesday morning.The National Weather Service said the snow total at the
Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 109 centimetres at 7am on Sunday.Daylight revealed cars nearly covered by 1.8-metre
snowdrifts and thousands of houses, some adorned in unlit holiday displays, dark from a lack of power.With snow swirling down untouched and
impassable streets, forecasters warned that an additional 30cm to 60cm of snow was possible in some areas through early Monday morning amid
wind gusts of 64km/h.Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time
to treat their medical conditions, and another died in Buffalo.Four more deaths were confirmed overnight, bringing the total to seven in
Buffalonians scrambling to get to anywhere that had heat amid what Hochul called the longest sustained blizzard conditions ever in the
Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo.Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running, buffeted by wind and nearly
buried in snow.By 4am on Saturday, their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby
shelter.He carried 6-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, following his footprints through
lights were steadily being restored across the US.According to poweroutage.us, less than 200,000 customers were without power Sunday at 3pm
England, power has been restored to tens of thousands with just under 83,000 people, mostly in Maine, still without it.In New York, about
34,000 households were still without power Sunday, including 26,000 in Erie County, where utility crews and hundreds of National Guard
troops battled high winds and struggled with getting stuck in the snow.Storm-related deaths were reported in recent days all over the
country: seven in Erie County, New York, and another in Niagara County where a 27-year-old man was overcome by carbon monoxide after heavy
snow blocked his furnace.Ten died in Ohio, including an electrocuted utility worker and those killed in multiple car crashes; six motorists
were killed in crashes in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky.A Vermont woman struck by a falling branch; an apparently homeless man found amid
announced that residents must now boil their drinking water due to water lines bursting in the frigid temperatures.In Tampa, Florida, the
house to wish them Merry Christmas and then headed off on his snowmobile for a second day spent shuttling people from stuck cars and frigid
homes to a church operating as a warming shelter.Through heavy, wind-driven snow, he brought about 15 people to the church in Buffalo on
Saturday, he said, including a family of five transported one-by-one.He also got a man in need of dialysis, who had spent 17 hours stranded
This article first appeared/also appeared in https://adaderana.lk
