The National Weather Service (NWS) says that the United States will be dealing with the severe impacts of winter weather and icy temperatures by the weekend. It has been very cold through two-thirds of the country, and there has been snow, icy rainfall, and heavy showers. 83 people have died because of the weather over the last week.
Nineteen people have died in Tennessee because of the bad weather, and sixteen more people have died in Oregon, including three people who tragically died Wednesday when a power line fell on their car and seemed to electrocute them. Eight more states have reported more deaths, in places like Illinois, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Washington, Kentucky, New York, and New Jersey.
The Pacific Northwest and some parts of the South experienced very cold winters, which has caused high amounts of natural gas to be used for heating and power generation. This trend is likely to continue, and hard-freeze warnings are in effect for a large part of the Gulf Region, from eastern Texas and Louisiana to parts of Florida and Georgia in Alabama and Mississippi. On Saturday night in Mississippi, the wind chill could drop as low as 0 degrees Fahrenheit.
The NWS said that a new mass of cold air was forming over the middle of the country. This caused temperatures to drop 20 to 30 degrees below normal from the High Plains to the Ohio and Tennessee valleys by Monday evening. Downwind of the Great Lakes, as well as parts of the central Appalachians and the Northeast, will get snow through Sunday evening.
At the same time, the Pacific Northwest is under a winter weather advisory because more freezing rain and storms are expected. In the lower regions of northern California, heavy rains and the chance of flash flooding are expected, while snow is expected to fall in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
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