At least 27 people have died under weather-related circumstances in recent days as ice storms pound the Pacific Northwest.
Several of those deaths are attributable to hypothermia as arctic temperatures blast the nation, as well as car accidents on frozen roads, according to media reports and local officials across the US.
Portland, Oregon is covered in a quarter-inch of ice, thanks to Winter Storm Indigo, and more than 70,000 customers are without power as of Wednesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us. Downed trees throughout the region have caused property damage and even fatalities — a fallen branch caused a downed power line to crash into a car. The incident killed three people and injured a two-year-old in Portland on Wednesday morning.
Storm Indigo will continue to travel east this week, The Weather Channel reports, bringing even more snowfall from Washington DC to New York later this week. In the meantime, the East Coast will see a return to more typical Winter temperatures following a brutal cold front earlier in the week.
The severe winter storms have unleashed chaos across the country, causing school closures and more than 10,500 flight delays and another 2,476 cancellations on Tuesday.
