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More than 40 people have died in a huge winter storm in the US. Schools were closed and flights cancelled as people grappled with heavy snowfall and icy conditions.
Nearly 300,000 households are also still without power, several days later, according to poweroutage.us. We spoke to people affected by the storm. Here are some of their responses.
‘I woke to my power being out and the sound of ice-covered trees cracking and branches falling’
Meghan Chrobot, 25, who lives in Nashville, was left without power and had to sit in her car to keep warm and charge her phone.
“I’ve genuinely never seen anything like this before,” says Meghan, who is originally from Pittsburgh and works in music business management. “I woke up on Sunday morning to my power being out and the sound of ice-covered trees cracking and branches falling. I live right by the highway and typically hear a lot of cars and traffic, but there was no sound of cars. All I heard for most of the day while my power was out was the sound of the trees falling.”
Her power came back on at 6pm on Sunday evening after being off since 5am. She says she is one of the lucky ones, as some of her friends are still without power.
“I have not left my apartment since Friday night, and with all the fallen trees and branches and the ice, it is impossible to drive anywhere,” she says. “I worked from home as usual on Monday and was advised to work from home on Tuesday.
“Several people’s cars had tree branches fall on them due to only having outdoor parking, and a gutter that was on the roof of my building must have fallen at some point from the weight of the ice and is now dangling outside of my bedroom window.”
‘There was ice in the toilets’
Linda, 70, who has just moved to eastern Michigan, thought she and her husband had fully weatherproofed the house they are selling in rural western Michigan, but were devastated when they went to check it.
“We had winterised the house by putting RV antifreeze in the sinks and toilets, and left the heat on at 64F (18C) and had nearly three-quarters of a tank of propane, which should have been fuel for months, as the gas furnace only needs to supplement the geothermal system we had installed,” says Linda.
Unfortunately, when they arrived at the house, one of the side doors had been left unlatched and, in the high winds, had been thrown wide open.
“The temperature in the house was 28F (-2C),” she says. “The propane was empty, the geothermal unit outlet was completely frozen shut, there was ice in the toilets even with the antifreeze, and we could already tell that we had at least one frozen and broken water pipe.”
The couple spent an unexpected night at their old home and had to order an emergency fuel delivery at three times the normal cost. They bought heaters at the farm supply store and slept on the floor on a dog pad with blankets, insulated coveralls and their coats.
“The temperature slowly climbed from 28F (-2C) to over 60F (15C) by 9am the following morning,” says Linda, who says they had to leave on the Saturday morning as they were expecting more viewings of the house.
“We have the water and well shut off and will return in a day or two after we’re confident the house has completely warmed up. We’ll turn the water and pump back on and see how many broken pipes we may have. We may be getting a little old for this.
“This has been a really tough winter - worse than usual. Michigan winters are something to take pretty seriously, but what’s been difficult with this winter is that it’s just been one storm after another. You just barely get dug out from one, and then there’s another.”
‘There was no press and no fuss, just Mayor Mamdani helping a random New Yorker’
When Eric went to clear his path after the snowstorm, little did he expect to see the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, also shovelling snow in the street in Brooklyn.
“It was during the heart of the snowstorm and happened right in front of my house,” says Eric, 52. “The new mayor had stopped his official car to help shovel out a stuck car. It was a repairman who obviously had his car there all day while he was doing his job, and he had got snowed in. He was trying to dig out his car when along came the mayor, who pulled up with his crew. There was no press and no fuss, just Mayor Mamdani helping a random New Yorker. It was incredible. It wasn’t for show. Hardly anyone was even there to see it, as it is a pretty quiet corner, although one woman walking past said: ‘Wait, is that the mayor?!’”
“People shouted thanks to him, and he waved and then got back in his car and drove off,” adds Eric of the events on Sunday afternoon.
‘I skidded right into a snow drift’
GH Hovagimyan, 75, who lives in north-eastern Pennsylvania, says he was lucky to avoid an accident when his car skidded on the snowy road.
“The roads are ploughed, but the wind blows the snow back over the roads, and it’s slippery,” he says. “On Wednesday, I was approaching an intersection at about 40 miles an hour. I hit the brakes, and I started skidding, so I hooked the steering wheel to turn the car to the right to avoid the other cars and skidded right into a snow drift. Thankfully, nobody was hit, and I didn’t hit the big truck, which was in the middle of the intersection.”
But when GH, a digital artist, tried to back out of the snow drift, he realised he was stuck and had left his mobile phone at home.
“Luckily, and out of nowhere, after about two minutes, these two guys appeared and started digging out my car,” says GH. “They worked for a fuel delivery company and said they had just dug out some other truck.
“We’re lucky we didn’t have ice storms like down south, and we have great neighbours who will take good care of us if anything happens.”
He says the area had about 27 inches of snow from Sunday, with snow continuing on Monday and Tuesday.
“We are in the Appalachian Plateau and usually up here it snows a little bit every day until it gets to about three feet and then it kind of stops,” he says, “But getting 27 inches all at once is unusual.”
