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Winter storm leaves 230,000 people without power in US; thousands of flights canceled

A snow plow clears the sidewalk along Main Street in Greenville, South Carolina, on Sunday. (Getty Images)

A powerful winter storm has swept through the Eastern United States, leaving more than 230,000 customers without power in the region.  

The storm also led to thousands of flight cancellations on Sunday and Monday after it caused multiple tornadoes from Florida to Maine.

More than 3,000 flights to, from and within the US were canceled Sunday, according to the flight tracker FlightAware. And by late Monday afternoon, more than 1,600 American flights had been canceled for the day.

Millions of people across the eastern US were digging out from heavy snow on Monday after the storm, which brought snow to the northern Plains and the Upper Midwest over the weekend.

The Transportation Department told residents in North Carolina to stay home and off flooded and ice-slicked roads on Monday, according to NBC News.

North Carolina Emergency Management officials said black ice made driving particularly dangerous near the North Carolina-Tennessee border. Two people died on Sunday after a vehicle veered off Interstate 95 and struck several trees in a median in North Carolina.

Several tornadoes in southwest Florida destroyed more than two dozen homes and damaged others in Lee County on the Gulf Coast, while thousands of homes were left without power.

There were “multiple tornadoes” in southwest Florida on Sunday morning, the National Weather Service in Miami said.

VIDEO: A major winter storm blanketed a swathe of North America in snow as it sliced up the US east coast into Canada, disrupting travel and cutting power to thousands of homes https://t.co/eeVWo9D7fk pic.twitter.com/u22m94isP5

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) January 17, 2022

Officials said 4 people were injured, 34 homes were demolished, and 62 other homes were rendered “unlivable.”

Reports said the winter storm left more than 620,000 homes and businesses without power at some point on Sunday, most of them in the mid-Atlantic and the Southeast.

A total of 230,000 customers across the country were in the dark by late Monday morning.


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