RECORD CANCELLATIONS:  US Weather threatening Christmas vacation plans

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer 

#USA, December 23, 2022 – Just 24 hours after the first official day of winter, more than 5,000 flights in the US have already been cancelled through Thursday and Friday.  Record drops in temperature and major outages for utilities are the predictions the National Weather Service (NWS) has for the holiday weekend owing to the massive winter storm charging across the United States.

‘Considerable’ travel impacts are possible the NWS warns citing snow squalls, and “brief bursts of moderate to heavy snow.”

On the ground snow will occur with gusts around or over 40 mph, creating sudden whiteouts and zero visibility and a danger of pile-ups on roadways, the NWS said as it warned of temperatures hitting as low as 36 degrees below zero by Friday night.

Photos of meteorologists tossing snow into the air and watching as it immediately condensed into ‘clouds’ went viral overnight.  Along with travel interruptions the storm which the NWS has dubbed “the Polar Express” will bring

• Dangerous Cold for Much of Country
• Increased Danger if Power Outages Occur
• Rapid Temperature Drops with Front as temperatures have already been observed to drop more than 20 degrees in an hour

The US weather map is almost entirely covered in red and pink warnings, a huge uptick from last Friday when it was covered less than a third of the way. There was not a single mainland state without an active weather warning as of Thursday.