From a surprising heat wave in California to blizzards burying parts of the Midwest and storms rolling over the East Coast, chaotic weather put more than half the nation’s population in the path of extreme conditions Monday.
Airport delays and cancellations piled up at major airports, with almost 13,000 flights canceled or delayed across the U.S. Many mid-Atlantic schools closed early as high winds were forecast. By Tuesday at 6 a.m., tracking service FlightAware reported more than 2,100 flights canceled or delayed. Travelers also faced jams at airport security checkpoints as a partial government shutdown continued to strain screener staffing.
PowerOutage.com said more than a half-million homes and businesses were without power early Tuesday, mainly in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts. Torrential rains flooded homes and washed out roads in Hawaii, while dry, windy conditions were fueling the largest wildfire in Nebraska’s history.
In Washington, the House and Senate postponed votes and federal agencies told workers to go home early, though by late afternoon the expected severe conditions failed to materialize and a tornado watch expired. Private forecaster AccuWeather estimated that more than 200 million people were under threat Monday from some form of dangerous weather — from extreme heat and wildfire advisories to flood and freeze watches from the National Weather Service.
A storm system that dropped snow by the foot in the Midwest, producing whiteout conditions in places, barreled toward the East Coast, bringing heavy rain, high wind threats and multiple tornado warnings. The greatest severe-weather threat stretched from New Jersey to Virginia. In New York City, officials warned of potentially strong gusts capable of knocking down tree limbs.
Four people, including a child, died Monday afternoon in New York City after a fire in a three-story apartment building spread during heavy winds. The National Weather Service confirmed four tornadoes in Missouri on Sunday that caused roof and tree damage; no injuries were reported. Blizzard conditions persisted in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes after the storm dumped several feet of snow in parts of Wisconsin and Michigan. Since Saturday, nearly 3 feet had fallen in the northern Wisconsin town of Mountain.
Meanwhile, a heat dome over the Southwest pushed temperatures into the triple digits in Arizona much earlier than normal. California began feeling summer-like warmth, with the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento forecast to approach 90 degrees by midweek. “This is technically still winter,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Monday. “This is not normal for March, obviously, but it is a sign of how climate change is impacting our city.”
Although temperatures were expected to reach 100 degrees, the wildfire threat around Los Angeles remained relatively low because winds were forecast to be light. Phoenix was expected to record five straight days of triple-digit temperatures — only once before, in 1988, had the city seen a 100-degree day in March, AccuWeather meteorologist Dan DePodwin said. “This is a heat wave that we have not seen before in recorded history in the Southwest,” he added.
Dry, windy conditions were fanning the largest wildfire in Nebraska’s history, where three fires had consumed more than 1,140 square miles of mostly grassland. “Mother Nature is throwing a doozy at us,” Gov. Jim Pillen said Monday.
Unrelenting rains triggered landslides, washed away roads and flooded homes and farmland in Hawaii over the weekend. Every island saw spots with more than 15 inches of rain, and parts of Maui received more than double that amount, the weather service said. While the worst of the storm had passed, more heavy rain was expected later in the week. Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said there were no reports of injuries or deaths as crews assessed damage.
Forecasters said the East Coast storms would leave sharply colder air in their wake. The storm lingered in parts of the Northeast into Tuesday morning. Wind chills below freezing were expected to reach the Gulf Coast and the Florida Panhandle, with warnings in effect across the Southeast and in parts of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas. To the north, rain was expected to change to snow behind the cold front, with heavy snowfall possible in the central Appalachians of West Virginia.