More than a million US power customers were in the dark Friday as a "bomb cyclone" winter storm walloped the country, closing highways, grounding flights and causing misery for Christmas travelers, reports BSS.
Heavy snow, howling winds and air so frigid it instantly turned boiling water into ice took hold of much of the nation, including normally temperate southern states.
Over 200 million Americans were under weather warnings, as wind chills sent temperatures down as low as -55 Fahrenheit (-48 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
In Hamburg, New York, 39-year-old Jennifer Orlando hunkered down with her husband.
"I can't see across the street," she told AFP. "We're not going anywhere."
Her power was out for four hours after a vehicle slid into a power line on the highway, she said. The biting cold is an immediate concern for hundreds of thousands of electricity customers who were without power, according to tracker poweroutage.us.
In El Paso, Texas, desperate migrants who had crossed from Mexico huddled for warmth in churches, schools and a civic center, Rosa Falcon, a school teacher and volunteer told AFP.
But some still chose to stay outside in -15 Fahrenheit temperatures because they feared attention from immigration authorities, she added.
In Chicago, Burke Patten of Night Ministry, a nonprofit dedicated to helping the homeless, said: "We've been handing out cold weather gear, including coats, hats, gloves, thermal underwear, blankets and sleeping bags, along with hand and foot warmers."
Major Caleb Senn, Chicago area commander for the Salvation Army, said the organization had centers open for people to shelter from the fierce weather.
"Some of the people we're seeing right now, they've just become homeless this year," he said.
"Some of these people are actually frightened. This is the first time they've been in the elements without someplace to go."
Some, however, were taking the biting cold in their stride.
In Canada, stoic last-minute holiday shoppers in downtown Toronto shrugged off the plunging temperatures.
Jennifer Campbell, of Caledon, Ontario, told AFP: "I think every few years we get some big storms and we just adjust. We are Canadians, that's the way we do it."
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
