Winter storm causes widespread outages in US?

The latest round of winter weather to hit the Northeast has caused hundreds of thousands of power outages after wreaking similar havoc in the Midwest, Skynews reports.

The second winter storm of the week – a mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain – brought the morning commute in several East Coast states to a crawl.

Winter-weary residents endured more school and government office closings and treacherous driving conditions.

In Pennsylvania, icy conditions knocked out power to nearly 750,000 homes and business, with the bulk of the outages occurring in the five-county Philadelphia region.

Mark Donathan told Sky News his wife braved the conditions with the couple’s two young children only to find a downed tree blocking the entrance and the power out at their day care centre in Wyndmoor.

He said downed trees were a common site in the area outside of Philadelphia.

Speed limits along parts of the Pennsylvania Turnpike were ordered reduced to 45mph and empty tractor-trailers were banned until further notice.

Governors in nearby New York and New Jersey declared state of emergencies due to the hazardous conditions in the region.

New York deployed more than 2,000 ploughs and other pieces of heavy equipment in the effort to keep roads clear.

Up to a foot of snow fell in some upstate areas, while lesser amounts and a coating of ice were expected in New York City.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority says Metro-North Railroad service was reduced by 18% on morning trains.

Train passengers endured being stranded due to power outages, adding hours to their regular commute into Manhattan.

To the west, much of Ohio got four to eight inches of snow overnight.

The onslaught of winter weather has forced some communities in Wisconsin start mixing sand with salt to stretch supplies.

Officials in Milwaukee said the city had used 62,000 tons of salt before the latest round of storms – already 5,000 tons more than its average.