MONSTER STORM IN US

• Millions of people hunkered down against a deep freeze Sunday morning to ride out the frigid storm that has killed at least 24 people across the U.S. and is expected to claim more lives after trapping some residents inside houses with heaping snow drifts and knocking out power to several hundred thousand homes and businesses.
• The scope of the storm has been nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico.
• About 60% of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.
• Some 1,346 domestic and international flights were canceled as of early Sunday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.
• Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.
• The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, with hurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions, paralysing emergency response efforts — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was stranded on Saturday — and shutting down the airport through Tuesday morning, according to officials.
• The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 109 centimetres at 7 a.m. on Sunday.
• Daylight on Sunday revealed cars nearly covered by 6-foot snowdrifts and thousands of houses, some adorned in unlit holiday displays, dark from a lack of power.
• Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes on Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, and another died in Buffalo.
• Four more deaths were confirmed overnight, bringing the total to seven in Erie County, where County Executive Mark Poloncarz warned there may be more dead.
• The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle. But heat and lights were steadily being restored across the U.S. According to poweroutage.us, less than 3,00,000 customers were without power at 8 a.m. EDT Sunday – down from a peak of 1.7 million.

SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB