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Mother Nature keeps frigid grip on much of nation
A dangerous Arctic blast will continue sweeping across the U.S. on Monday and linger through at least midweek, prolonging bitter cold that set record-low temperatures in parts of the country and threatens to further disrupt daily life, including the first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest in Iowa and an NFL playoff game, forecasters say.
The National Weather Service said wind chills are expected to push temperatures 30 degrees below zero from the Northern Rockies to northern Kansas and into Iowa, testing the hardiness of Iowa caucusgoers willing to brave the deep chill on Monday.
The weather was wreaking havoc with candidates’ schedules in the homestretch, CBS News Chicago reported.
Nam Y. Huh / AP
Wind chills in the Windy City area could drop as low as minus-40 degrees Monday, the station said, adding that wind chill advisories are in place until Wednesday at 9 a.m. for the area.
Arctic storms left at least four dead and knocked out electricity to tens of thousands in the Northwest, brought snow to the South and walloped the Northeast with blizzard conditions forcing the postponement of the Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Buffalo Bills NFL playoff game hosted in bone-chilling Buffalo, New York.
The game was scheduled to be held Monday after being cancelled Sunday.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Buffalo native, posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, showing near-whiteout conditions.
“Conditions right now in Orchard Park, where the game would have started moments ago,” she wrote early Sunday afternoon. “No visibility and dangerously high winds.”
The Bills invited diehard fans to help dig out snow-filled Highmark Stadium, offering $20 an hour for their labor as well as free food and breaks in a “comfortable warm area.”
“We made progress shoveling, but not much at all,” said Logan Eschrich, a storm chaser who made his way to Buffalo and pitched in.
It remains to be seen if the show will go on Monday afternoon. The weather service expects heavy lake-effect snow to push into upstate New York from Lake Erie, adding to the 1 to 2 feet to snow already blanketing the region. Snow fell at a rate of 2 inches per hour.
The Bills and Steelers weren’t the only teams impacted by frigid conditions this weekend. The Kansas City Chiefs played the Miami Dolphins in the fourth-coldest game in NFL history on Saturday night.
Sub-zero wind chills were expected to grip much of the country Monday, plunging to 50 degrees below zero in Montana and the Dakotas.
“It takes a matter of minutes for frostbite to set in,” the South Dakota Department of Public Safety said in a statement Sunday urging people to stay indoors.
Other parts of the country could see temperatures drop 25 to 40 degrees below normal, from the Rockies to the Ohio Valley.
As temperatures in Texas plunged, the state’s power grid operator appealed to residents to voluntarily conserve electricity Monday morning due to the cold weather causing “record breaking demand” for energy. A deadly freeze in 2021 left millions of Texans without power but state officials this week expressed confidence about the grid’s reliability as the cold front approached.
Freezing rain is expected to pelt parts of the Southern Plains and Southern Appalachians.
Even places like Florida won’t be spared from turbulent weather, with forecasts predicting showers and thunderstorms from Monday into Tuesday.
In Oregon Monday, more than 100,000 homes and businesses were without electricity, most of them in the Portland metro area, according to PowerOutage.us, a day after high winds and a mix of snow and ice brought down trees and power lines.
Jenny Kane / AP
Some 100 trees toppled over the weekend in a community just south of Portland, including one that fell on a house and killed a man. Two other people died of suspected hypothermia and a fourth died in a fire that spread from an open-flame stove after a tree fell onto an RV, authorities said.
“Given the extent of the damage and the high level of outage events, restoration efforts will continue into the week and customers are encouraged to plan accordingly,” Portland General Electric said in a statement. The utility said it was watching a second weather pattern that could bring high winds and freezing rain on Tuesday.
Widespread power outages affecting tens of thousands were also reported Sunday in Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In Nebraska, the Omaha Public Power District asked customers to conserve electricity to prevent outages.
Airports across the country were impacted. More than half of flights into and out of Buffalo Niagara International Airport were canceled. Scores of flights also were canceled or delayed at Chicago, Denver and Seattle-Tacoma airports.
As of 5:30 a.m. EST, almost 1,500 flights had been canceled nationwide, FlightAware.com reported.
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President-elect Donald Trump fired another salvo in his long-running effort to have his New York criminal conviction tossed, with his attorneys alleging earlier this month that there was juror misconduct during his trial.
In a previously undisclosed Dec. 3 letter to Justice Juan Merchan that was made public Tuesday, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote that there was “grave juror misconduct” in the proceedings in a Manhattan courtroom earlier this year.
However, heavy redactions in the letter and subsequent exchanges with prosecutors obscured almost all information about the accusations themselves.
“The jury in this case was not anywhere near fair and impartial,” they wrote.
Merchan on Tuesday directed Trump to make the redacted letter public, and instructed prosecutors to publish their own redacted responses. The judge also criticized Trump’s lawyers for making such serious allegations without sworn statements.
Prosecutors called the allegations “vague accusations of juror misconduct” in one of their responses. They claimed Trump’s attorneys did not want to have the allegations subject to investigation or a public hearing.
“Notwithstanding the import of their allegations, counsel do not request and in fact oppose a hearing at which their allegations could be fully examined, referring to such a hearing as ‘invasive fact-finding,'” wrote a prosecutor for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Still, they argued such an investigation wasn’t yet appropriate.
“Counsel’s allegations fall far short of the standard required to request such a hearing in any event,” they wrote.
It is unclear if the allegations relate to a June 7 letter from Merchan that alerted prosecutors and Trump’s attorneys to a comment left on the court’s Facebook page the night before Trump’s conviction.
“My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted,” the user wrote. “Thank you folks for all your hard work!!!!”
The person who made the comment had previously described themselves as a “professional s**tposter.”
Trump was found guilty in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records, connected with a scheme to cover up a “hush money” payment to an adult film star. He pleaded not guilty and is contesting the conviction on multiple fronts.
Japanese automakers Honda Motor and Nissan Motor are reportedly entering merger talks to help them compete against Tesla and other electric vehicle makers, according to the Nikkei financial newspaper.
The two firms are considering operating under a single holding company, and are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding for the new entity, according to the Tokyo-based Nikkei.
The paper also reports that Honda and Nissan are considering bringing in Mitsubishi Motors, of which Nissan is the top shareholder, under the holding company to create one of the world’s largest auto groups.
In a statement to CBS MoneyWatch, Nissan said it has not announced the details in the report, but that the two companies “are exploring various possibilities for future collaboration, leveraging each other’s strengths,” which it announced in March.
Honda did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment.
In March, Japan’s number two and three automakers, after rival Toyota, deepened ties when they agreed to explore a strategic partnership on electric vehicles.
Analysts characterized the move as one that is aimed at helping the automakers catch up with Chinese competitors, including BYD, which have captured more market share, while Japanese firms have lost ground by focusing more on hybrid vehicles.
China overtook Japan as the world’s biggest vehicle exporter in 2023, aided in part by its dominance in the electric car space.
Honda announced plans in May to double its investment in electric vehicles to $65 billion by 2030, as part of a target set three years ago of achieving 100% EV sales by 2040.
Similarly, Nissan in March announced that 16 of the 30 new models it plans to launch over the next three years would be “electrified.”
Climate concerns drive demand
The world’s auto giants are increasingly prioritizing electric and hybrid vehicles, with demand growing for less polluting models as concern about climate change grows.
At the same time, however, consumer demand for EVs has slowed amid high prices, range anxiety and developing infrastructure around charging points.
Hybrids that combine battery power and internal combustion engines have remained popular in Japan, accounting for 40% of sales in 2022.
But Japanese firms’ focus on hybrids has left them in the slow lane in meeting the growing appetite for purely electric vehicles. Just 1.7% of cars sold in Japan in 2022 were electric, compared to 15% in western Europe and 5.3% in the United States.
