Americans and Canadians face major outages on Christmas Day

• Thousands of flights were cancelled over the holiday season.
• Nearly 250 million people are impacted.
• Road traffic incidents have been involved in a number of storm-related deaths.

As a powerful winter storm continues to batter North America, more than one million people in the United States and Canada will be without power on Christmas Day.

When air pressure falls, a bomb cyclone occurs, bringing snow, severe winds, and subfreezing temperatures.

Nearly 250 million people are impacted, and the storm, which spans more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from Quebec to Texas, has been related to at least 19 fatalities.

Thousands of flights were cancelled over the holiday season.

The coldest state in the US is Montana, in the west, where temperatures have fallen to -50F. (-45C).

Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan have all experienced close to total whiteout conditions. The US National Weather Service (NWS) recorded “zero mile” visibility in Buffalo, New York state.

Some locals in the Pacific Northwest ice skated on Portland’s and Seattle’s frozen streets.

In the northeastern New England region of the United States, coastal flooding has been observed, inundating villages and bringing down power lines.

Hard-freeze advisories are in effect even in Florida and Georgia, two typically milder southern states.

Only California, where continental mountain ranges are helping to insulate the Golden State, has mainly avoided the chilly weather.

The harshest effects of the Arctic blast were being felt in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.

From British Columbia to Newfoundland, a large portion of the rest of the country was under winter storm and extreme cold warnings.

Road traffic incidents have been involved in a number of storm-related deaths, including a 50-car pileup that claimed the lives of four drivers in Ohio. Four other people perished in separate accidents in the state.

Low pay rates were to blame for the shortage of snowplough drivers, which was causing travel issues across the nation.

Over the next three days, the NWS predicts that more than 100 daily low temperature records might be tied or broken.

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