WASHINGTON (AP) — Chaotic weather coast to coast in the U.S. — from surprising heat in California to damaging winds around Washington, D.C. — put more than half the American public in the path of extreme conditions Monday.
Storms across the nation's eastern half forced airlines to cancel more than 3,000 flights nationwide Monday, and many schools closed early in the mid-Atlantic states where high winds and tornadoes were in the forecast.
Blizzards buried
parts of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota while torrential rains flooded homes and washed out roads in Hawaii.
In Washington, the House of Representatives postponed votes because of difficulty traveling with inclement weather, and federal agencies told workers to go home early.
Airport delays and cancellations piled up Monday in some of the nation’s largest airports — including those in New York, Chicago and Atlanta.
The private weather service AccuWeather calculated that more than 200 million people were under threat Monday of some kind of dangerous weather.
Those range from extreme heat and wildfire advisories to flood and freeze watches from the National Weather Service.
The storm system that dropped snow by the foot in the Midwest is barreling toward the East Coast with dangerously high winds and potential for “producing strong and long track tornadoes,” the weather service warned Monday.
“Wind is the primary threat, but within any of these areas of strong wind there could be some embedded tornadoes and even the potential for a tornado to develop ahead of the line,” said Evan Bentley, a meteorologist with the weather service.
The biggest threat stretched from Maryland to the upper edge of South Carolina.
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein urged residents to enable emergency alerts on their phones ahead of expected wind gusts topping 70 mph (112 kph).
Beyond the threat to lives and property, “whether it’s wind gusts from a squall line, blizzard or snow, or just wind because of the storm, you’re looking at several major airports being impacted,“ said AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tyler Roys.
Blizzard conditions persisted Monday in parts of Wisconsin and Michigan, where the storm brought as much as 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow by morning.
Another round of snow and gusty winds on Monday could come close to doubling those totals in upper Michigan.
The thousands of flights canceled nationwide Monday included more than 400 in and out of Chicago O’Hare International and another 300 at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International, according to FlightAware, which tracks flight disruptions.
Kelly Price, who was trying to get home to Colorado after a family vacation in Orlando, Florida, said their Sunday night flight wasn’t canceled until the early Monday morning.
“By that time the only place for us to sleep was the airport floor. So we’re all tired and frustrated,” she said, adding that the soonest flight they could book doesn’t leave until Tuesday afternoon.
A heat dome over the Southwest will push temperatures well into the triple digits in Arizona most of the week, much earlier than the region usually sees.
Much of California is starting to feel like summer too. The San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento will see temperatures pushing toward 90 F (32 C) by midweek.
“This is a heat wave that we have not seen before in recorded history in the Southwest,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Dan DePodwin.
Phoenix is expected to have five straight days of triple digit temperatures this week — only once before, in 1988, has the city recorded a 100 F (37.8 C) day in March, DePodwin said.
Unrelenting rains triggered landslides and flooded homes and farmland in Hawaii over the weekend.
Some areas of Maui received more than 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said in a social media post.
Resident and real estate broker Jesse Wald, who recorded video of a coastal road’s collapse, said parts of the road were flooded by mud and sediment.
“In the 20 years I’ve been here I’ve never seen this much rain,” he said.
Forecasters said the East Coast storms were expected leave sharply colder weather in its wake.
By Tuesday morning, wind chills below freezing were expected to reach the Gulf Coast and the Florida Panhandle with warnings in effect across the Southeast and in part of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas, forecasters warned.
To the north, rain was expected to change over to snow behind the cold front with heavy snow possible in the central Appalachians of West Virginia.
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Brumfield reported from Cockeysville, Maryland, and Seewer from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; Julie Walker in New York; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Gary Fields in Washington; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed.
