Over 2,600 flights canceled in US as record breaking ice storms strike

As temperatures drop to record lows of 5°F in New York and 6°F in the capital, central and eastern America have ground to a virtual halt in the grip of icy storms. According to the National Weather Service heavy snowfall and ice moving eastward from the Southern Plains pounded Missouri, Arkansas, southern Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. The winter storm dropped 10 inches (25 cm) of snow on Cincinnati before hitting the nation’s capital with a heavy snowfall reaching up to a foot (30cm) deep, said NWS meteorologist Brian Hurley. The conditions were so severe the Federal offices in Washington DC had to close. Approximately 50 million Americans are now under wind chill advisories as the thermometers plunged to these new lows. Previously in New York City the record was 9°F in 2003, 11°F recorded in Washington in 1987.
“Washington and Baltimore – that’s where the bull’s eye’s going to be,” Hurley also said. The South has failed to escape the bitter conditions with states of emergency being declared in North Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia and Kentucky. A virtually unprecedented 2,600 flights had to be canceled, with the hardest hit airports being in North Carolina and Tennessee. The weather front is anticipated to reach Boston on Wednesday, this following on from a weekend storm that left 16 inches of snow on the city, making it the city’s snowiest ever February. Hurley also reported that this new storm will be followed by another arctic front, bringing frigid cold to the eastern United States by Thursday or Friday.