weather
Winter weather warnings extended from New Mexico to the Great Lakes.
CNN
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A powerful winter storm is blowing snow across parts of the Central Plains, accumulating snow from Colorado to Minnesota into Tuesday, threatening widespread power outages and hazardous road conditions.
The storm will move across the Midwest and Great Lakes by Tuesday.It then moved northeast, approximately 160,000 Homes and businesses were still without power Monday after several feet of snow fell over the weekend.
A blizzard warning extended Monday from northern Colorado and Kansas to parts of Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota. Two to 10 inches of snow could fall in these areas, with more than a foot of snow possible in some places, according to the National Weather Service.
The back-to-back winter storms are expected to dump as much snow in some cities as they did during the winter, and this storm is expected to have a longer-lasting impact than the previous one.
The National Weather Service warned that travel could become “nearly impossible” in some areas as the storm moves through the Plains and Upper Midwest, causing icy roads and whiteout conditions.
Freezing rain and sleet were already making road conditions slick in parts of Nebraska Sunday night, the National Weather Service in North Platte said. More severe whiteout conditions are possible as the rain turns into a snowstorm.
The Bureau of Meteorology said strong winds and heavy wet snow could damage power lines and trees, raising concerns about widespread power outages.
Winter storm warnings extend from New Mexico to Wisconsin and the Dakotas, where snowfall totals could reach 4 to 12 inches.
Amy Forti/AP
Snow clings to the trees along the Lake Como boardwalk on March 22 in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Last week, storms dumped snow across the northern Plains and Northeast. More than two feet of snow has fallen in some states, including Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
about As of late Sunday night, 160,000 homes and businesses across the Northeast remained without power, according to PowerOutage.us.Most of the power outages occurred in Maine, where about 120,000 people were affected. I was in the dark. Over 25,000 Approximately 15,000 people in New Hampshire Power outages also occurred in New York.
Central Maine Power said many power lines were down across Maine after the storm blew through. The utility said Sunday that its crews responded to more than 700 emergency calls for issues such as roadblocks and downed lines.
Maine power companies have restored power, but over 50 The number of customers affected by the storm was decreasing as of Sunday night, and recovery efforts in severely affected coastal areas could continue into Wednesday, the company said.
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Some sky-gazers across the northern United States may have been lucky to catch a glimpse of the northern lights, or northern lights, on Sunday night due to a rare geomagnetic storm.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, geomagnetic storms are large disturbances to the Earth's external magnetic field, most commonly caused by strong surges of solar wind from the Sun known as “coronal mass ejections.”
The event increased the chances of seeing the aurora borealis in parts of the Pacific Northwest, Northern Plains, Great Lakes and interior Northeast on Sunday night.
Cities such as Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Portland lie north of the observation line. According to the Alaska Geophysical Institute, auroral activity is expected to increase across Alaska, and weather permitting, auroras can be seen from Utkiachvik as far south as Kodiak and King Salmon.
Storms can cause disruptions like radio frequency power outages and GPS issues here on Earth.
This is a particularly severe geomagnetic storm, rated as a G4 out of 5 as of Sunday afternoon. According to the Space Weather Prediction Center, storms of this strength occur only an average of 60 days every year. The storm then fell to a G3 level out of five by early Monday morning.
CNN CNN’s Samantha Beach and Nick F. Anderson contributed to this report.