In Amarillo, Texas, on Jan 13, it was 10 degrees Fahrenheit by midday. In the flat, dormant pastureland, ranchers have been feeding their cattle more in anticipation of the frigid weather, so they can stay warm, said J.D. Ragland, a Texas A&M University agriculture expert in Randall County.
“Long episodes of extremely cold weather in our part of the world, we’re just simply not used to,” Ragland said.
Snow and frigid temperatures in the West
Parts of Wyoming, Oregon, Northern California, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Alaska were under winter storm warnings and wind chill warnings on Jan 13, with low temperatures and heavy snow expected in some areas and freezing rain possible.
Heavy snow was being reported in parts of Idaho.
In Sacramento, California, snow-covered roads in the Sierra Nevada caused “hazardous travel,” officials said.
In Montana, temperatures of 40 or 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit were possible on Jan 13. Flood advisories in some areas of the state also remained in effect.
Power outages and flight disruptions
In the Great Lakes region, just under 220,000 households were without power, according to PowerOutage.us, and in Oregon, more than 120,000 customers were without electricity.
Thousands of people across the Northeast also experienced outages Saturday. In New England, most of the outages were in Vermont, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, where wind gusts of 30 mph or more had been predicted overnight.
In air travel, there were more than 1,200 flight cancellations and more than 4,300 flight delays within, into or out of the United States by the afternoon of Jan 13, according to FlightAware, a tracking site. Cancellations were reported at airports including Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, Detroit’s Metro Wayne County Airport, Denver International Airport and Buffalo, New York’s Niagara International Airport. On Friday, the storm disrupted more than 10,000 flights across the country.
How the Iowa caucuses have been hit
This is the final weekend before the Iowa caucuses, and Republican presidential candidates are battling two forces: brutally cold temperatures and the threat of low voter turnout as they navigate the dangerous, icy roads and winds.
Candidates have maintained a more regular schedule on Jan 13 after being forced to cancel many events on Jan 12.
Still, in Des Moines, the National Weather Service urged drivers to stay off the roads amid a storm that was once in a generation. A measurement at the Des Moines airport recorded 22.3 inches of snow so far this week, the most in a five-day period since 1941, according to the weather service.
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