Monster storm hits U.S. with snow, ice, outage risks (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Take a look at this live look at Dallas from our affiliate KTVT. Near Pittsburgh, the heaviest snow is yet to come, but forecasters say some areas could see a foot of snow before the storm tapers off tomorrow. This is what people awakened to this morning in Austin, Texas. Ice and snow blanketing the city as the worst of the storm blew through the region overnight. In Florence, Alabama, first responders found themselves in need of help. Their fire truck slid off the ice-covered road. No one was hurt, and an industrial tow team was able to pull it free. In the South, freezing rain has been the big problem. This is Clarksville, Tennessee. The state has seen more than half an inch of ice causing widespread power outages. Indeed, across the U.S. right now, more than 900,000 homes and businesses are without power. Tennessee makes up almost a third of that. We're following all these late-breaking developments of this very, very dangerous monster storm. CNN's Gloria Pasmino is on the scene for us in New York right now. CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar is over at the CNN Weather Center. Let's begin with you, Gloria. What is New York experiencing right now?

[00:01:18] Speaker 2: Well, Wolf, I just want to show you very quickly, if we turn around right now, I know you're a Buffalo guy, but people are out here enjoying the conditions. This guy just strapped on his skis and is going for a walk in Central Park. And as you can see, there's a lot of people here. Even though I just spoke to Mayor Zoran Mamdani a few hours ago, and he was telling me he really is asking New Yorkers to stay inside. The reason for that is so that sanitation workers can get to work clearing the roads, cleaning up the sidewalks. So far, so good, he told me. The city has significantly increased the number of workers. Take a listen.

[00:01:55] Speaker 3: We had initially had 2,000 DSNY workers for every 12-hour shift. That's now gone up to 2,500 people per 12-hour shift. We're seeing a lot of their work in advance of the storm being critical in helping us meet this moment. We are, frankly, seeing too many New Yorkers still out on the roads. That's actually impeding the ability for sanitation to meet this moment. So the more people stay home, the more work our city workers can actually get done.

[00:02:17] Speaker 2: Wolf, also important here in New York City, the mayor announced earlier today that tomorrow the city schools, the public schools will be closed, the buildings will be closed, but students will be doing remote learning. That's big news for families and parents who, of course, need the time to be able to plan starting into the work week tomorrow. I also spoke to a handful of New Yorkers this morning, Wolf. You know, not much keeps people inside their home, and there's a lot of people trying to take in the scenery, trying to take in the storm, taking pictures, including one man who told me this morning he ran seven miles. Take a listen.

[00:02:54] Speaker 4: Why not? I mean, this is beautiful. I feel like when it snows, everything kind of slows down. Everything's calm. The city gets quiet. Looks like manageable right now.

[00:03:04] Speaker 2: Are you well prepared, fully stocked?

[00:03:06] Speaker 5: Yeah, we are. We did the grocery shopping. We got the car all taken care of, put in the garage. It's crazy out here. I'm sick of it.

[00:03:13] Speaker 2: You're sick of it? Too cold?

[00:03:15] Speaker 5: Too cold.

[00:03:19] Speaker 2: So, Wolf, we are still expecting several more hours of snowfall, and the big question going into the evening will, of course, be the cleanup. A bit of a new test and a new challenge for this new administration from the new mayor, but so far, so good from what we have been seeing around on the roads here in Manhattan.

[00:03:38] Speaker 1: A lot of snow in New York City right now. All right, Gloria, thank you very much. I want to step back and get the big picture right now. Our meteorologist, Allison Chinchar, is over at the CNN Weather Center for us. Allison, what are you seeing? What does it look like?

[00:03:51] Speaker 6: All right, so we've got a little bit of everything, Wolf. You've got your rain. You've got your snow. You've got your ice and even the potential for tornadoes because this is a very extreme storm system as it continues to make its way off to the north and east. You can see heavy snow right now across portions of Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, even across Youngstown, Ohio. Stretching down to the south, we're starting to see temperatures warming back up, so the change over into rain for some folks in Alabama and Georgia and even Florida, but you've also got some thunderstorms down across the extreme south. This is where we have the potential for tornadoes going through the rest of the afternoon and early evening. This tornado watch is in effect until 6 p.m. Central time today as we could expect some of those stronger thunderstorms along the southern fringe of that line. Farther north, though, those temperatures are much cooler. That's why you're getting more of the winter precipitation. You have several still that are kind of right there along that freezing mark, so it's a little bit of a mix. Sometimes snow, sometimes freezing rain or sleet, but farther north where the temperatures are well below freezing, this is where we're getting the snow, and that dark purple color, that's where you're talking about the incredibly heavy bands of snow. Now, where we've had a lot of significant icing, this is where you're seeing some of those highest power outage numbers, but we do expect to see some additional colors popping on this map, especially farther east and farther north as the storm system continues to progress for the day to day. Looking at some of these ice amounts, it's no wonder you have such high power outages. Look at this. Brentwood, Tennessee, that's a suburb of Nashville, three-quarters of an inch of ice. Several others, places like Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, right around that half-inch mark, and some of those numbers are still going to go up because it's not done. These are the areas where we could still see up to an additional quarter of an inch of ice on top of what they've already had. Now, for the rest of the day today, the focus is really going to be the southeast, the mid-Atlantic, and the northeast where the system as a whole begins to finally wrap up by the time we get to Monday morning.

[00:05:42] Speaker 1: That's a long time from now from my perspective here in Washington, D.C. All right, Allison Chinchar, thank you, and Gloria Pasbino, thanks to you as well.

[00:05:51] Speaker 3: Bill Weir is with us in very snowy New York City. So, Bill, any signs that this is letting up?

[00:05:59] Speaker 7: Not yet, Manu. I think we're going to be in for this inch-an-hour or so rate until prime time, and then it'll ease off. The forecast now for 8 inches. The greatest blizzard ever 10 years ago. The second greatest 10 years before that, but it looks like this one's going to break the streak of just epic 2, 3 feet of snow on years that end in 6. But still enough to get the families out under the Manhattan Bridge. We don't get a lot of vertical drop in Brooklyn, so this is one of the key sledding hills here as well. You can't even see Manhattan across the East River in this white-out condition here, but we've got thousands of snowplows on the streets of New York City, 700 salt spreaders, although at this temperature, salt doesn't work as well once it gets below 15 degrees or so. So they have to add brine to it a little bit, but the new mayor of New York City, Zoran Mamdani, promising that they are prepared. But the story around the rest of the country, this is so huge, it affects nearly 200 million people, and nearly two dozen states have now declared a state of emergency. Let's go down to Kentucky, a place more familiar with roses and bluegrass than ice and blizzard conditions. Derek Van Dam, our meteorologist, is there. What's the latest, Derek?

[00:07:13] Speaker 8: Yeah, they're also known for bourbon and horse races here where I'm at in Louisville, Kentucky, right? You're in a real-life snow globe, so am I. It's transitioned from that sleet and freezing rain to more of the lighter, fluffier snow. Just a kind of scene set here for you to give you an idea of where we are in Louisville downtown. Over my right shoulder, that's the Clark Memorial Bridge, and if you go north on that bridge, you're right into Indiana, and that's where some of the heaviest snow bands have set up, into southern Indiana and into south-central Ohio. That's taking a look at the latest radar here on my graphics, and it's pretty clear to see that as well. But this system is not done, and it's impacting so many states, like Bill rightly said. What I found very interesting is that there was lightning in the ice that was falling from the sky from central Mississippi into western Tennessee. Now, the temperature difference between where I'm at, Louisville, about, what is it, right now, looks like 15 degrees, according to my graphics, just to our south in Nashville. It's 31 degrees, and that was temperature difference between 100 miles or so is all the difference between what type of precipitation we're getting, because Nashville, they got a half an inch of ice. Meanwhile, we have sleet, and that's kind of that granular-type ice pellets that you see here. So this is going to reduce the overall snowfall totals here because there's a warm layer of temperature just above us here at the surface. But let's walk around because I want to show you the streets largely deserted. Heads up, Stu, there's a curb there, but you can see the snow has covered the roads. Difficult travel conditions. There's a stalled-out vehicle in the background there as well. And really, the concern here is that the temperatures are going to go through this rapid drop for about 50% of the United States. And one other thing to note about this is in the southern portion of this massive winter storm is the potential for severe weather today too. So if you're in the western panhandle of Florida, southern Alabama, and southwestern Georgia, you might even see an isolated tornado pickup. I saw from the Storm Prediction Center there's what's called an area forecast discussion highlighting that risk right now in the coming hours. We're going to monitor that. But on the cold side where we are, we've got the dynamic storm system that's unfolding right before our eyes with a full-fledged ice storm possible and continuing across the mid-Atlantic and especially into the southern Appalachian, northeast Georgia. That area could get this up to 3 quarters to an inch of ice that is debilitating, crippling ice that will bring down power lines and ground transport to a halt on the roadway. So lots of problems associated with this massive storm. StormTracker.com