hello, everyone. i m kate bolduan. at this hour, we re tracking this massive winter storm sweeping across the united states. it is impacting the vast majority of americans today. just two days before christmas. the storm is bringing blizzard conditions. i mean i don t need to say it. you could see it. blizzard conditions and ice freezing rain and very strong winds to cities coast to coast. areas near the great lakes could see up to three feet of snow like buffalo. but the cold, record-breaking and life-threatening. more than 200 million americans are under windchill alerts. the storm has not knocked out power to at least a million customers so far and travel is starting to get back. more than 3700 flights have been canceled today and more than 2,000 others have been delayed. that is not even to speak of what the roads are like right now. we re going to get to. we have reporters stationed across the country. let s start with meteorologist al alice isson chinchar. up an dow
alice isson chinchar. up an down the eastern seaboard, we re seeing the outage numbers tick up. but for many places they have yet to bottom out in terms of temperatures so you don t want to see those folks getting colder without power or access to heat. so that is going to be a big concern. even here in atlanta, it is very cold. by atlanta standards. current temperatures 18 degrees. this is a toul that has completely frozen over, rock solid. it is not just towels but also spot as long the roadways making travel very dangerous and that is not just here but elsewhere across the country. because you have basically this polar vortex, that arctic mass of air that has pushed down across the country and you could see there on the map showing where the air has really started to push back down across much of the country. it is also why you have so many people under these winter windchill alerts across country.
texas. it is 22 degrees. it got to 17 earlier today. but these migrants, they are still here. and they want to be in this country. they say there are so many hardships that they ve already gone through this is just another one to add to the pile. i want to show you what they ve been doing. they ve been sleeping on the sidewalk. they have now picked up essentially all of their blankets and folded them to use possible lip for tomorrow again. but as you see, there is many, many people not able to get into the shelters last night because a lost migrants did not go through the immigration process with border patrol and because they didn t do that they were not allowed in the city shelters or the convention centers or the hotels and schools. they had to be at a nonprofit, and the nonprofits were overcapacity. so what happened overnight is that there was a bus, i want to show you that first and so overnight just some people here were able to get on the bus to
delays and cancellations at airports across the country. and the ripple effects are nowhere close to overyet. iva ivan rodriguez is in hartsfield-jackson for us. what are you hearing there. there is once in a generation winter storm effecting so many people. plans and are feeling to begin to feel the polar and it is now about 18 degrees. you could see the stark difference there in terms of the temperature. but it is not only having an effect when if comes to air travel, we re keeping an eye on the number of power outages. there is more than a million and here in georgia there is 100,000 people without power and that poses obvious risk for so many people across the state and the country. now in terms of cancellations and delays. across the country we re seeing more than 3800 cancellations.
different pharmacy, they are in short stock in many places across the country. and know that it s not an emergency if you run out of one or the other. the point of these really is to help your kid feel better. they don t actually treat the underlying illness so if you only have one you ll be okay. the bigger thing, kate, is that it s crazy to me we are in this situation again. how many times do we have to go through the same cycle of running out of medications in parts of the country before we stand up a supply system that can respond to these predictable increases in demand. i think you re saying a lot. people can understand unprecedented demand but being here again seeing empty shelf, i think you re speaking to a lot of parents and nonparents alike. we also, though, still have covid to contend with, dr. ranney. the number of adults getting the new bivalent is pretty bad, only 14%. what dr. jha had to say about