At least six people died in the United States on Monday due to winter weather. Seven states – Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas – have been under a state of emergency since Sunday.
The body of a man who had frozen to death overnight due to the cold was found in a bus shelter in Houston on Monday morning. The remaining five deaths occurred in car crashes in the states of Virginia, Kansas, Missouri and North Carolina.
The National Weather Service says that most of the snow has fallen for now, but that it will remain brutally cold in 18 states in the northeastern US in the coming days. More than 60 million people must therefore take warnings and advice into account to cope with the weather.
In many places, schools and government buildings are closed and parks and ditches are temporarily transformed into sledding and skating rinks. 200,000 households are still without power. Airports are also affected by the weather: more than 2,000 flights were canceled and more than 23,000 flights were significantly delayed. A large snowball fight was held in the capital Washington.