Winter storm brings bitter cold, power cuts and deadly tornado to US

At least three people were found dead after a tornado tore through a seaside town in North Carolina at the rough edge of a winter storm that has left millions in the US without power in subfreezing temperatures.

The storm that overwhelmed power grids and immobilised the Southern Plains carried heavy snow and freezing rain into New England and the Deep South and left behind record-setting cold temperatures.

Wind-chill warnings extended from Canada into Mexico.

In Chicago, a foot-and-a-half (46cm) of new snow forced public schools to cancel in-person classes for Tuesday.

Hours earlier, along the normally balmy Gulf of Mexico, cross-country skier Sam Fagg hit fresh powder on the beach in Galveston, Texas.

The worst US power outages were in Texas, affecting more than four million homes and businesses.

More than 250,000 people also lost power across parts of Appalachia, and another quarter of a million were still without electricity following an ice storm in north-west Oregon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outage reports.

Four million people lost power in Mexico.

Texas officials requested 60 generators from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and planned to prioritise hospitals and nursing homes.

The state opened 35 shelters to more than 1,000 occupants, the agency said.

More than 500 people sought comfort at one shelter in Houston.

Mayor Sylvester Turner said other warming centres had to be shut down because they lost power.

Utilities from Minnesota to Texas implemented rolling blackouts as cold temperatures strained power grids.

Blackouts of more than an hour began around dawn on Tuesday for Oklahoma City and more than a dozen other communities.

The blackouts stopped electric-powered space heaters, furnaces and lights just as temperatures hovered around minus 8 degrees, some of the lowest readings in more than a week of below-freezing conditions.

Nebraska’s blackouts came amid some of the coldest weather on record: in Omaha, the temperature bottomed out at 23 degrees below zero overnight, the coldest in 25 years.

Rolling outages also affected some northern Iowa counties, where overnight lows dipped to nearly 30 below around Sioux City and wind chills to around 40 below in some places.

Blackouts of up to 30 minutes were also planned for Tuesday morning in the north-western Minnesota city of Moorhead.

The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities covering 14 states, imposed rolling two-hour blackouts to ease the extreme demand for heat and electricity, saying they were “a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole”.

The outages forced a Texas county to scramble to get more than 8,000 doses of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine into arms after a public health facility lost power early on Monday and its backup generator also failed, said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

County officials distributed the doses at three hospitals, Rice University and the county jail because those places had large groups of people in places where they would not have to drive and with appropriate medical personnel on hand.

“It feels amazing. I’m very grateful,” said Harry Golen, a 19-year-old student who waited for nearly four hours with his friends, much of it in the cold.

He was among the last people to get the shots, which otherwise would not have reached students until March or April.

More than 400,000 additional doses due in Texas will now not arrive until at least Wednesday because of the weather, officials said.

In North Carolina, the National Weather Service’s office in Wilmington dispatched a team to confirm that a tornado did indeed touch down and to survey damage in Brunswick County, said Mark Willis, the office’s meteorologist in charge.

Three people died and at least 10 were injured when the tornado tore through a golf course community and another rural area just before midnight on Monday, destroying dozens of homes.

Governor Roy Cooper said rescue operations were continuing.

“The sky lit up and there was a lot of pop-pop-popping. And the loud thunder. And then it sounded like a train, a freight train coming through… That’s when all the damage occurred,” said Sharon Benson.

The 63-year-old said her roof was damaged and her garage door was blown off.

Windows were shattered and nearby trees were uprooted.

Authorities in multiple states reported deaths in crashes on icy roads, including two people whose vehicle slid off a road and overturned in a waterway in Kentucky on Sunday, state police said.

Deaths in Texas included a woman and a girl who died from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning in Houston, at a home without electricity from a car running in an attached garage, police said.

Law enforcement also said subfreezing temperatures were probably to blame for the deaths of two men found along roads in the Houston area.

In west Tennessee, a 10-year-old boy died after falling into an ice-covered pond on Sunday during a winter storm, fire officials said.

Several cities had record lows: in Minnesota, the Hibbing/Chisholm weather station registered minus 38F.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota, dropped to minus 26F.