Tag Archives: WEA

World

New Zealand counts cost of Auckland floods, more rain forecast

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WELLINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Flood-ravaged Auckland is forecast to receive further heavy rain in the coming days, authorities in New Zealand’s largest city said on Monday, as insurers counted the costs of what looks likely to be the country’s most expensive weather event ever.

Four people lost their lives in flash floods and landslides that hit Auckland over the last three days amid record downpours. A state of emergency remains in place in Auckland. A state of emergency in the Waitomo region south of Auckland was lifted.

Flights in and out of Auckland Airport are still experiencing delays and cancellations, beaches around the city of 1.6 million are closed and all Auckland schools will remain closed until Feb. 7.

“There has been very significant damage across Auckland,” New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins told state-owned television station TVNZ on Monday. “Obviously there were a number of homes damaged by flooding but also extensive earth movements.”

Currently, around 350 people were in need of emergency accommodation, he added.

LOOMING CLOUDS

Metservice is forecasting further heavy rains to hit the already sodden city late on Tuesday.

“We have more adverse weather coming and we need to prepare for that,” Auckland Emergency Management duty controller Rachel Kelleher told a media conference.

Fire and Emergency services received 30 callouts overnight Monday, including responding to a landslide when a carport slid down a hill.

The council has designated 69 houses as uninhabitable and has prevented people from entering them. A further 300 properties were deemed at risk, with access restricted to certain areas for short periods.

The north of New Zealand’s North Island is receiving more rain than normal due to the La Nina weather event.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) said Auckland has already recorded more than eight times its average January rainfall and 40% of its annual average rainfall.

INSURERS FACE HEFTY BILL

The cost of the clean up is expected to top the NZ$97 million ($63 million) bill for flooding on the West Coast in 2021 but will not be anywhere near as expensive as the estimated NZ$31 billion insured costs of two major earthquakes in Christchurch in 2010-2011, said Insurance Council of New Zealand spokesperson Christian Judge.

Insurance Australia Group’s (IAG.AX) New Zealand divisions have received over 5,000 claims so far and Suncorp Group (SUN.AX) said it received around 3,000 claims across the Vero and AA Insurance Brands. New Zealand’s Tower (TWR.NZ) said it had received around 1,900 claims.

“The number of claims is expected to rise further over the coming days, with the event still unfolding and as customers identify damage to their property,” IAG said in a statement.

Economists say the recovery and rebuild could add to inflationary pressures in New Zealand as vehicles and household goods need to be replaced and there is an increase in construction work needed to repair or rebuild houses and infrastructure damaged by the flooding.

($1 = 1.5385 New Zealand dollars)

Reporting by Lucy Craymer; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Lincoln Feast

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

UK’s National Grid to pay people to use less power amid cold snap

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LONDON, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Britain’s National Grid (NG.L) said it would pay customers to use less power on Monday evening and that it had asked for three coal-powered generators to be warmed up in case they are needed as the country faces a snap of cold weather.

The group said that it would activate a new scheme called the Demand Flexibility Service where customers get incentives if they agree to use less power during crunch periods.

The service, which has been trialled but not run in a live situation before, would run from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday, it said, adding that the move did not mean electricity supplies were at risk and advised people not to worry.

The measures were announced in order to “ensure that everyone gets the electricity they need,” Craig Dyke, Head of National Control at National Grid ESO, told BBC Radio on Monday, adding that 26 suppliers had signed up for the scheme.

[1/2] A British government advert offering people help with winter energy bills is seen on the side of a bus in Stockport, Britain, November 16, 2022. REUTERS/Phil Noble

Below freezing temperatures have been recorded across much of the UK in recent days with the national weather service, the Met Office, last week issuing severe weather warnings for snow and ice.

National Grid’s Dyke said consumers could make small changes to make money by reducing their energy usage, such as delaying cooking or putting on the washing machine until after 6 p.m.

National Grid said in December that over a million British households had signed up to the scheme, which is one of its strategies to help prevent power cuts.

The announcement about the coal-powered generators did not mean they would definitely be used, it said in a separate statement.

Coal-powered generators were last put on stand-by in December when temperatures dropped and demand for energy rose, but they were not needed on that occasion.

Reporting by William Schomberg and Muvija M in London, and Sneha Bhowmik in Bengaluru; editing by Tomasz Janowski, Andrew Heavens, Kirsten Donovan

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World

Hundreds evacuated as blaze erupts in slum next to Seoul’s posh Gangnam district

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SEOUL, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Fire swept through part of a shanty town in the South Korean capital, Seoul, on Friday, destroying 60 homes, many constructed from cardboard and wood, and forcing the evacuation of around 500 people.

Emergency services took five hours to put out the blaze, which erupted before daybreak in Guryong Village, a slum that lies just across a highway from Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district. Officials said no casualties were reported so far.

Home to around 1,000 people, Guryong is one of the last remaining shanty towns in the capital and has become a symbol of inequality in Asia’s fourth largest economy.

Ten helicopters and hundreds of firefighters, police and troops joined the effort to put out the blaze which, according to officials, razed almost one in ten of the 600-plus homes in Guryong.

“I saw a flash from the kitchen and opened the door, and flames were shooting from the houses next door,” said Shin, a 72-year-old woman whose home was completely burned in the inferno.

“So I knocked every door nearby and shouted ‘fire!’ and then called 119,” she said, giving only her surname.

[1/4] Smoke rises from a fire at Guryong village, the last slum in the glitzy Gangnam district, in Seoul, South Korea, January 20, 2023. Yonhap via REUTERS

Kim Doo-chun, 60, said his family was unaffected by the fire but he told Reuters that the village was constantly at risk of disaster due partly to its cardboard homes and narrow alleys.

“If a fire breaks out in this neighbourhood, the entire village could be in danger if we don’t respond quickly. So we’ve been responding together for decades,” said Kim, who has lived in the area for 30 years.

The slum has long been prone to fires and flooding, and safety and health issues abound.

The government had unveiled plans for redevelopment and relocation after a huge fire in late 2014, but those efforts have made little progress amid a decades-long tug of war between landowners, residents and authorities.

The civic authorities for Seoul and Gangnam district, and state-run developers have been at odds over how to compensate private landowners in Guryong and have yet to agree whether residents, most of whom are squatters, are entitled to government support for relocation and housing.

Informed about the fire while in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered all-out efforts to prevent a bigger disaster, his spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye said.

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon visited the still smouldering village and asked officials to prepare to relocate affected families.

Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Gerry Doyle & Simon Cameron-Moore

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US

California rainstorm death toll reaches 20, Biden plans visit

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Jan 16 (Reuters) – The parade of atmospheric rivers that pounded California for three weeks finally faded on Monday, enabling the state to begin lengthy repairs to roads and levees as the White House announced President Joe Biden planned to survey the damage.

The nine consecutive rainstorms that inundated California in succession since Dec. 26 killed at least 20 people while tens of thousands remained under evacuation orders as of Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom said in an executive order that reinforced the state’s response to storm damage.

“The last of the heavier rain in California is slowly fading. After midnight it shouldn’t be heavy anymore,” said meteorologist David Roth of the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

Biden will travel to areas of the central coast on Thursday to meet first responders, visit affected towns, and “assess what additional federal support is needed,” the White House said.

The president had already issued an emergency declaration on Jan. 8 to free up federal aid and then on Saturday authorized disaster assistance for Merced, Sacramento and Santa Cruz counties.

The White House has yet to reveal the areas Biden will visit.

Among the more dramatic images of storm damage were those of Highway 1, the scenic coastal highway near Big Sur, which was closed at several points due to mudslides and falling boulders strewn across the road.

While damaging, the storms also helped mitigate a historic drought, as much of the state has already received half or more its average annual rainfall.

The Russian River, swollen with floodwater following a chain of winter storms, flows past the town of Guerneville, California, U.S. January 15, 2023. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo

But with more than two months to go in the rainy season, officials are urging Californians to continue conserving water. The U.S. Drought Monitor still shows almost the entire state under moderate or severe drought conditions. Reservoir levels were still below average for this time of year, officials said.

Moreover, the atmospheric rivers largely failed to reach the Colorado River basin, a critical source of southern California’s water.

“If you rely on the Colorado River basin as a part of your water supply, then there will be continuing drought problems due to the extreme drought in that part of the world,” Michael Anderson, California’s state climatologist, told reporters.

The Colorado’s two major reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, were at 28.5% and 22.6% of capacity, respectively, and still below levels from this time a year ago according to Water-Data.com.

The ninth consecutive atmospheric river fizzled out on Monday, its remnants soaking the southernmost part of the state, Arizona and northern Mexico, Roth said.

The storms are akin to rivers in the sky that carry moisture from the Earth’s tropics to higher latitudes, dumping massive amounts of rain.

Another storm was coming that could bring moderate rain on Tuesday and Wednesday. The U.S. National Weather Service said it lacked the volume to be classified as an atmospheric river, while the state Department of Water Resources said it may briefly qualify as one.

California can otherwise expect dry conditions for the remainder of January, state officials said.

Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, Calif., and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Josie Kao, Grant McCool and Jamie Freed

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World

‘Feels like summer’: Warm winter breaks temperature records in Europe

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  • Ski slopes deserted due to lack of snow
  • Activists call for faster action on climate change
  • Pollen warning issued as plants bloom early
  • Governments get short-term gas-price respite

LONDON/BRUSSELS, Jan 4 (Reuters) – Record-high winter temperatures swept across parts of Europe over the new year, bringing calls from activists for faster action against climate change while offering short-term respite to governments struggling with high gas prices.

Hundreds of sites have seen temperature records smashed in the past days, from Switzerland to Poland to Hungary, which registered its warmest Christmas Eve in Budapest and saw temperatures climb to 18.9 degrees Celsius (66.02°F) on Jan. 1.

In France, where the night of Dec. 30-31 was the warmest since records began, temperatures climbed to nearly 25C in the southwest on New Year’s Day while normally bustling European ski resorts were deserted due to a lack of snow.

The Weather Service in Germany, where temperatures of over 20C were recorded, said such a mild turn of the year had not been observed in the country since records began in 1881.

Czech Television reported some trees were starting to flower in private gardens while Switzerland’s office of Meteorology and Climatology issued a pollen warning to allergy sufferers from early blooming hazel plants.

The temperature hit 25.1C at Bilbao airport in Spain’s Basque country. People basked in the sun as they sat outside Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum or walked along the River Nervion.

“It always rains a lot here, it’s very cold, and it’s January, (but now) it feels like summer,” said Bilbao resident Eusebio Folgeira, 81.

French tourist Joana Host said: “It’s like nice weather for biking but we know it’s like the planet is burning. So we’re enjoying it but at the same time we’re scared.”

Scientists have not yet analysed the specific ways in which climate change affected the recent high temperatures, but January’s warm weather spell fits into the longer-term trend of rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change.

“Winters are becoming warmer in Europe as a result of global temperatures increasing,” said Freja Vamborg, climate scientist at the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

It follows another year of extreme weather events that scientists concluded were directly linked to global warming, including deadly heatwaves in Europe and India, and flooding in Pakistan.

“The record-breaking heat across Europe over the new year was made more likely to happen by human-caused climate change, just as climate change is now making every heatwave more likely and hotter,” said Dr Friederike Otto, climate scientist at Imperial College London.

Temperature spikes can also cause plants to start growing earlier in the year or coax animals out of hibernation early, making them vulnerable to being killed off by later cold snaps.

Robert Vautard, director of France’s Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, said that while temperatures peaked from Dec. 30 to Jan. 2, the mild spell has lasted for two weeks and is still not over. “This is actually a relatively long-lived event,” he said.

EMPTY SLOPES

French national weather agency Meteo France attributed the anomalous temperatures to a mass of warm air moving to Europe from subtropical zones.

It struck during the busy skiing season, leading to cancelled trips and empty slopes. Resorts in the northern Spanish regions of Asturias, Leon and Cantabria have been closed since the Christmas holidays for lack of snow.

On Jahorina mountain above the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, it should have been one of the busiest weeks of the season. Instead, the chair-lifts hung lifeless above the grassy slopes. In one guesthouse a couple ate dinner alone in the restaurant, the only guests.

A ski jumping event in Zakopane, southern Poland, planned for the weekend of Jan. 7-8 was cancelled.

Karsten Smid, a climate expert at Greenpeace Germany, said while some climate change impacts were already unavoidable, urgent action should be taken to prevent even more drastic global warming.

“What’s happening right now is exactly what climate scientists warned us about 10, 20 years ago, and that can no longer be prevented now,” Smid said.

WEATHER EASES GAS STRAIN

The unusually mild temperatures have offered some short-term relief to European governments who have struggled to secure scarce gas supplies and keep a lid on soaring prices after Russia slashed deliveries of the fuel to Europe.

European governments have said this energy crisis should hasten their shift from fossil fuels to clean energy – but in the short term, plummeting Russian fuel supplies have left them racing to secure extra gas from elsewhere.

Gas demand has fallen for heating in many countries due to the mild spell, helping to reduce prices.

The benchmark front-month gas price was trading at 70.25 euros per megawatt hour on Wednesday morning, its lowest level since February 2022 – just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The head of Italy’s energy authority predicted that regulated energy bills in the country would fall this month, if the milder temperatures help keep gas prices lower.

However, a note by Eurointelligence cautioned that this should not lull governments into complacency about Europe’s energy crisis.

“While it will give governments more fiscal breathing room in the first part of this year, resolving Europe’s energy problems will taken concerted action over the course of several years,” it said. “Nobody should believe this is over yet.”

Reporting by Kate Abnett, Richard Lough, Alan Charlish, Krisztina Than, Luiza Ilie, Susanna Twidale, Riham Alkousaa, Jason Hovet, Emma Pinedo, Kirsten Donovan, Federico Maccioni; writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Mark Heinrich

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Business

Southwest flight upheaval a ‘system failure,’ U.S. says

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WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (Reuters) – U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday ratcheted up pressure on Southwest Airlines (LUV.N), saying thousands more canceled flights indicated a system failure at the low-cost carrier.

“We are past the point where they could say this is a weather-driven issue,” Buttigieg said in an interview posted by ABC News on its website. “Don’t get me wrong, all of this began with that severe storm. We saw winter weather affecting the country and severely disrupting all airlines.”

Nationwide, at least 60 people died in weather-related incidents in recent days, NBC News reported.

The rest of the aviation system and other airlines seemed to be back from the weather disruptions, Buttigieg said.

“So what this indicates is a system failure (at Southwest), and they need to make sure that these stranded passengers get to where they need to go and that they are provided adequate compensation, not just for the flights itself … but also things like hotels, like ground transportation, like meals because this is the airlines’ responsibility,” he said, adding he had spoken to the company’s leadership.

U.S. airlines had canceled thousands of flights as a massive winter storm swept over much of the country before and during the Christmas holiday weekend, but Southwest’s woes have deepened while other airlines have largely recovered.

Southwest has canceled a total of more than 14,500 flights since Friday. On Wednesday it canceled 2,500 flights, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

[1/3] Travelers at Baltimore Washington International airport deal with the impact of Southwest Airlines canceling more than 12,000 flights around the Christmas holiday weekend across the country and in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. December 27, 2022.  REUTERS/Michael A. McCoy

Southwest told Reuters it would reimburse customers for travel-related costs and had already processed thousands of requests.

It also said employees across the airline were helping crews in many functions.

Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) said in an email it had capped fares in all domestic and international markets where Southwest operates. The program includes over 700 nonstop markets and are valid through Dec 31. United and American announced similar programs.

U.S. Representative Rick Larsen, top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in a tweet that the company was treating flight cancellations as “controllable” beginning Dec. 24, which triggers reimbursement for incidental expenses and refunds for full fares.

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said the low-cost carrier needed to upgrade its legacy systems and apologized to customers and employees in a video message.

Shares of Southwest tumbled over 5% on Wednesday after diving 6% on Tuesday. Some analysts said the cancellations will pressure profits in the fourth quarter.

“The total impact to revenue could be in the 9% range of our expected Q4 revenue, which compares to our current estimate with revenues 15% ahead of 2019 levels in 2022” Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu said.

Kahyaoglu estimated total EBITDAR (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and restructuring or rent costs) impact from the cancellations could be in the range of $700 million.

Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Abhijith Ganapavaram in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Porter, Howard Goller, Alexandra Alper and David Gregorio

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US

Blizzard kills 13 in Buffalo, N.Y., area

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Dec 25 (Reuters) – A lethal blizzard paralyzed Buffalo, New York, on Christmas Day, trapping motorists and rescue workers in their vehicles, leaving thousands of homes without power and raising the death toll from storms that have chilled much of the United States for days.

At least 30 people have died in U.S. weather-related incidents, according to an NBC News tally, since a deep freeze gripped most of the nation, coupled with snow, ice and howling winds from a sprawling storm that roared out of the Great Lakes region on Friday.

CNN has reported a total of 26 weather fatalities.

Much of the loss of life has centered in and around Buffalo at the edge of Lake Erie in western New York, as numbing cold and heavy “lake-effect” snow – the result of frigid air moving over warmer lake waters – persisted through the holiday weekend.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the storm’s confirmed death toll climbed to 13 on Sunday, up from three reported overnight in the Buffalo region. The latest victims included some found in cars and some in snow banks, Poloncarz said, adding that the death tally would likely rise further.

“This is not the Christmas any of us hoped for nor expected,” Poloncarz said on Twitter on Sunday. “My deepest condolences to the families who have lost loved ones.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul called it an “epic, once-in-a-lifetime” weather disaster that ranked as the fiercest winter storm to hit the greater Buffalo area since a crippling 1977 blizzard that killed nearly 30 people.

“We have now surpassed the scale of that storm, in its intensity, the longevity, the ferocity of its winds,” Hochul told an evening news conference, adding that the current storm would likely to go down in history as “the blizzard of ’22.”

RESCUING THE RESCUERS

The latest blizzard came nearly six weeks after a record-setting but shorter-lived lake-effect storm struck western New York.

Despite a ban on road travel imposed since Friday, hundreds of Erie County motorists were stranded in their vehicles over the weekend, with National Guard troops called in to help with rescues hindered by white-out conditions and drifting snow, Poloncarz said.

Many snow plows and other equipment sent on Saturday and Sunday became stuck in the snow, “and we had to send rescue missions to rescue the rescuers,” he told reporters.

The Buffalo police department posted an online plea to the public for assistance in search-and-recovery efforts, asking those who “have a snow mobile and are willing to help” to call a hotline for instructions.

The severity of the storm was notable even for a region accustomed to harsh winter weather.

Christina Klaffka, 39, a North Buffalo resident, watched the shingles blow off her neighbor’s home and listened to her windows rattle from “hurricane-like winds.” She lost power along with her whole neighborhood on Saturday evening, and was still without electricity on Sunday morning.

[1/9] A snow plow is left stranded on the road following a winter storm that hit the Buffalo region on Main St. in Amherst, New York, U.S., December 25, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

“My TV kept flickering while I was trying to watch the Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears game. I lost power shortly after the 3rd quarter,” she said.

John Burns, 58, a retiree in North Buffalo, said he and his family were trapped in their house for 36 hours by the storm and extreme cold that he called “mean and nasty.”

“Nobody was out. Nobody was even walking their dogs,” he said. “Nothing was going on for two days.”

Snowfall totals were hard to gauge, he added, because of fierce winds that reduced accumulation between houses, but piled up a 5-foot (1.5-meter) drift “in front of my garage.”

Hochul told reporters on Sunday that the Biden administration had agreed to support her request for a federal disaster declaration.

About 200 National Guard troops were mobilized in western New York to help police and fire crews, conduct wellness checks and bring supplies to shelters, Hochul said.

ELECTRICITY HIT HARD

The larger storm system was moving east on Sunday, after knocking out power to as many as 1.5 million customers at the height of outages late last week and forcing thousands of commercial flight cancellations during the busy holiday travel period.

More than 150,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power on Sunday, down sharply from the 1.8 million without power as of early Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. In Buffalo, 15,000 residents were still without electricity on Sunday evening, Poloncarz said.

He said one electrical substation knocked offline was sealed off by an 18-foot-tall mound of snow, and utility crews found the entire facility frozen inside.

Christmas Day temperatures, while beginning to rebound from near-zero readings that were widespread on Saturday, remained well below average across the central and eastern United States, and below freezing even as far south as the Gulf Coast, National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist Rich Otto said.

Nearly 4 feet of snow was measured at Buffalo airport by Sunday, according to the latest NWS tally, with white-out conditions lingering south of Buffalo into the afternoon as continuing squalls dumped 2-3 inches of snow an hour.

In Kentucky, officials confirmed three storm-related deaths since Friday, while at least four people were dead and several injured in auto-related accidents in Ohio, where a 50-vehicle pileup shut down the Ohio Turnpike during a blizzard on Friday.

Other deaths related to extreme cold or weather-induced vehicle accidents were reported in Missouri, Tennessee, Kansas and Colorado, according to news reports.

(The story has been refiled to remove extraneous word in headline)

Reporting by Gabriella Borter and Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington; Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani, Idrees Ali, Ismail Shakil, Rick Cowan and ; Writing by Steve Gorman; editing by Ross Colvin, Diane Craft, Nick Zieminski, Leslie Adler, Gerry Doyle and Bradley Perrett

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Ahmed Aboulenein

Thomson Reuters

Washington-based correspondent covering U.S. healthcare and pharmaceutical policy with a focus on the Department of Health and Human Services and the agencies it oversees such as the Food and Drug Administration, previously based in Iraq and Egypt.

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US

U.S. deep freeze forecast to break Christmas Eve records

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Dec 24 (Reuters) – An arctic blast gripped much of the United States on Saturday driving power outages, flight cancellations and car wrecks, as plummeting temperatures were predicted to bring the coldest Christmas Eve on record to several cities from Pennsylvania to Georgia.

Temperatures are forecast to top out on Saturday at just 7 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 13 Celsius) in Pittsburgh, surpassing its previous all-time coldest Christmas Eve high of 13 F, set in 1983, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Cities in Georgia and South Carolina – Athens and Charleston – were likewise expected to record their coldest daytime Christmas Eve high temperatures, while Washington, D.C., was forecast to experience its chilliest Dec. 24 since 1989.

The flurry of yuletide temperature records were predicted as a U.S. deep freeze sharpened by perilous wind chills continued to envelope much of the eastern two-thirds of the nation into the holiday weekend.

The freeze already produced fatal car collisions around the country with CNN reporting at least 14 dead from weather-related accidents.

The arctic cold combined with a “cyclone bomb” of heavy snow and howling winds roaring out of the Great Lakes region on Friday and into the Upper Mississippi and Ohio valleys wreaked havoc on power systems, roadways and commercial air traffic.

Extreme winter weather was blamed for at least five deaths on Friday.

Two motorists were killed, and numerous others injured, in a 50-vehicle pileup that shut down the Ohio Turnpike in both directions during a blizzard near Toledo, forcing an evacuation of stranded motorists by bus to keep them from freezing in their cars, officials said.

Three more weather-related fatalities were confirmed in neighboring Kentucky – two from car accidents and one a homeless person who died of exposure.

Freezing rain and ice from a separate storm in the Pacific Northwest made travel treacherous there as well on Friday.

[1/7] A view of an area after heavy snowfall in Regent, North Dakota, U.S. December 23, 2022, in this picture obtained from social media. Blake Rafferty/Twitter@BlakeRafferty1/via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

BORDER TO BORDER

From the Canadian to the Mexican border and coast to coast, some 240 million people in all were under winter weather warnings and advisories of some sort on Friday, according to the weather service.

The NWS said its map of existing or impending meteorological hazards “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever.”

With energy systems across the country strained by rising demand for heat and storm-related damage to transmission lines, as many as 1.8 million U.S. homes and businesses were left without power as of early Saturday morning, according to tracking site Poweroutage.us.

The disruptions upended daily routines and holiday plans for millions of Americans during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

The American Automobile Association had estimated that 112.7 million people planned to venture 50 miles (80 km) or more from home between Friday and Jan. 2. But stormy weather heading into the weekend likely ended up keeping many of them at home.

At least 3,741 U.S. flights were canceled on Saturday, with total delays tallying 10,297, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. More than 5,000 flights were cancelled on Friday, the flight tracking said.

The city of Buffalo and its surrounding county on the edge of Lake Erie in western New York imposed a driving ban, and all three Buffalo-area border crossing bridges were closed to inbound traffic from Canada due to the weather.

The severe weather prompted authorities across the country to open warming centers in libraries and police stations while scrambling to expand temporary shelter for the homeless. The challenge was compounded by the influx of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border by the thousands in recent weeks.

Bitter cold intensified by high winds extended through the Deep South to the U.S.-Mexico border, plunging wind chill factors to single digits Fahrenheit (minus 18 to minus 13 Celsius) in El Paso, Texas. Exposure to such conditions can cause frostbite within minutes.

Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Joel Schectman, Gabriella Borter, Tim Reid, Lisa Baertlein, Erwin Seba, Susan Heavey, Laila Kearney, Alyson McClaren, Aleksandra Michalska, and Scott DiSavino; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Aurora Ellis, William Mallard and Diane Craft

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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US

Airlines cancel 5,700 U.S. flights amid fierce winter storms

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WASHINGTON, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Airline cancellations topped 5,700 U.S. flights on Friday as massive winter storms snarled airport operations around the United States and frustrated tens of thousands of holiday travelers.

That followed nearly 2,700 canceled flights on Thursday, while just over 1,000 flights have already been canceled for Saturday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.

Passenger railroad Amtrak has canceled dozens of trains through Christmas, disrupting holiday travel for thousands.

Highways in the Midwest faced lengthy delays because of snowy weather or crashes and authorities in parts of Indiana, Michigan, New York and Ohio urged motorists to avoid nonessential travel.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed ground stops or delays for de-icing at a number of U.S. airports because of winter weather.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN the U.S. aviation system “is operating under enormous strain” with two different storms and high winds affecting airports around the country. About 10% of U.S. flights were canceled on Thursday, Buttigieg said.

Another 10,400 U.S. flights were delayed on Friday – including more than 40% of those operated by American Airlines (AAL.O), United Airlines (UAL.O), Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) and Southwest Airlines (LUV.N) – after 11,300 flights were delayed Thursday.

Southwest canceled 1,238 flights on Friday, 29% of all its scheduled flights, while Alaska Airlines (ALK.N) canceled 507, or 64%, of its flights.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had 357 flights, or 63% of departures, canceled Friday. The FAA lifted a ground stop there due to snow and ice but late Friday delays were still averaging nearly three hours.

Nearly half of departing flights at Detroit Metro were canceled, along with 70% at Portland, 38% at New York’s LaGuardia, 29% at Chicago O’Hare and 27% at Boston.

Chicago was facing dangerously cold temperatures with wind chills hitting minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 Celsius).

Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Josie Kao, Jonathan Oatis, Sandra Maler and Edmund Klamann

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Storm cuts U.S. oil, gas, power output, sending prices higher

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Dec 23 (Reuters) – Frigid cold and blowing winds on Friday knocked out power and cut energy production across the United States, driving up heating and electricity prices as people prepared for holiday celebrations.

Winter Storm Elliott brought sub-freezing temperatures and extreme weather alerts to about two-thirds of the United States, with cold and snow in some areas to linger through the Christmas holiday.

More than 1.5 million homes and businesses lost power, oil refineries in Texas cut gasoline and diesel production on equipment failures, and heating and power prices surged on the losses. Oil and gas output from North Dakota to Texas suffered freeze-ins, cutting supplies.

Some 1.5 million barrels of daily refining capacity along the U.S. Gulf Coast was shut due to the bitterly cold temperatures. The production losses are not expected to last, but they have lifted fuel prices.

Knocked out were TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA), Motiva Enterprises (MOTIV.UL) and Marathon Petroleum (MPC.N) facilities outside Houston. Cold weather also disrupted Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), LyondellBasell (LYB.N) and Valero Energy (VLO.N) plants in Texas that produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

Sempra Infrastructure’s Cameron LNG plant in Louisiana said weather disrupted its production of liquefied natural gas without providing details. Crews at the 12 million tonne-per-year facility were trying to restore output, it said.

Freeze-ins – in which ice crystals halt oil and gas production – this week trimmed production in North Dakota’s oilfields by 300,000 to 350,000 barrels per day, or a third of normal. In Texas’s Permian oilfield, the freeze led to more gas being withdrawn than was injected, said El Paso Natural Gas operator Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI.N).

U.S. benchmark oil prices on Friday jumped 2.4% to $79.56, and next-day gas in west Texas jumped 22% to around $9 per million British thermal units , the highest since the state’s 2021 deep freeze.

Power prices on Texas’s grid also spiked to $3,700 per megawatt hour, prompting generators to add more power to the grid before prices fell back as thermal and solar supplies came online.

New England’s bulk power supplier said it expected to have enough to supply demand, but elsewhere strong winds led to outages largely in the Southeast and Midwest; North Carolina counted more than 187,000 without power.

“Crews are restoring power but high winds are making repairs challenging at most of the 4,600 outage locations,” Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks wrote on Twitter.

Heating oil and natural gas futures rose sharply in response to the cold. U.S. heating oil futures gained 4.3% while natural gas futures rose 2.5%.

In New England, gas for Friday at the Algonquin hub soared 361% to a near 11-month high of $30 mmBtu.

About half of the power generated in New England comes from gas-fired plants, but on the coldest days, power generators shift to burn more oil. According to grid operator New England ISO, power companies’ generation mix was at 17% from oil-fired plants as of midday Friday.

Gas output dropped about 6.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) over the past four days to a preliminary nine-month low of 92.4 bcfd on Friday as wells froze in Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

That is the biggest drop in output since the February 2021 freeze knocked out power for millions in Texas.

One billion cubic feet is enough gas to supply about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.

Reporting by Erwin Seba and Scott DiSavino; additional reporting by Arathy Somasekhar and Laila Kearney; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Kirsten Donovan, Aurora Ellis and Leslie Adler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Scott Disavino

Thomson Reuters

Covers the North American power and natural gas markets.

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