Seventy-five million Americans were expected to be engulfed by a dangerous and potentially deadly Northeast storm that touched the Mid-Atlantic states and Florida. Record snowfall fell in parts of the Northeast, leaving thousands without power at times.
The conditions were coupled with “hurricane-force wind gusts and subzero wind chills,” said weather forecasters and news outlets. North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, and Illinois were among areas the National Weather Service projected to face trouble. Early states of emergency were declared in Virginia and New York.
“Heavy wet snow along with high winds are predicted which poses a threat for downed trees, electrical outages, and major impacts to travel. In addition, there is also the threat of tidal flooding,” said the Virginia Department of Emergency prior to the storm.
The National Weather Service, in a Jan. 30 report, said the blizzard dumped two feet of snow along the East Coast and Mid-Atlantic states. Electricity went out and, in some states, shelters and warming centers opened up to take people in. Snowfall for the Jan. 28-29 storm hit and broke records in New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maine logging as much as 33.2 inches of snow. Ten to twenty-plus mile per hour winds, didn’t help.
›“In parts of Barnstable County, Massachusetts, where Cape Cod is located, hurricane-strength winds reached 81 mph,” CNN reported. Boston’s Logan International Airport saw 23.6 inches of snow by the night of Jan. 29, “the snowiest January day Boston has recorded and tying the record for biggest 1-day snowfall total,” CNN added.
Thousands of airline flights were cancelled. Temperatures weren’t expected to rise quickly.
Experts described the storm as a “bomb cyclone, it happens when a storm drops a certain amount of atmospheric pressure over 24 hours,” said CNN.
Temps in the Sunshine State fell below 40 degrees in South Florida, said the Associated Press. In North Carolina, the National Weather Service reported 20 incidents of snowfall in the state overnight between Jan. 28 and Jan. 29, with three inches of snow or a little more in several places.
2022 started off with an array of storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes, snow and flooding in different parts of the United States. Last year, weather and climate disasters in the United States totaled $145 billion and killed 688 people.
Since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) started tracking billion-dollar extreme weather events in 1980, there have been 298 such events, totaling more than $1.975 trillion in damages and costs. According to the NOAA, the last five years have cost the United States $742 billion in 86 separate billion-dollar weather disasters, an average of 17 per year, a new record.
“This is God’s sanction on America. Watch the weather. Every year the weather has gotten worse and worse and worse,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam has stated on Twitter. Like his teacher the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad prophesied before him, there is a reason why America is experiencing these extreme weather phenomena.
“The coming of Allah (God) in search for the Black lost members of their nation today is to make Himself (Allah God) known, so He can conquer our captors by using weapons against which they have no power,” Messenger-Messiah Muhammad explains in his seminal book, “The Fall of America.”
“America is under such divine attack now, in storms as rain, hail and earthquakes—(the latter is yet to take place). A terrific drought is on its way, too, against America. The Book must be fulfilled. The Bible and Holy Qur’an both refer to all that I have said,” he wrote.
“God has said you have to reap now what you’ve sown. You’ve destroyed cities and towns in Europe and Africa, in the Middle East. Things that you didn’t want, America destroyed. Now, look at your cities. They’re under water; your farmland being destroyed; fire burning the lands of California and the West; tornadoes, hurricanes,” Minister Farrakhan has also warned. This is just the beginning, he added.
—Final Call Staff
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