North America: Millions of people facing Christmas without power

In North America, millions of people are facing Christmas without power as a weeklong deadly winter storm continued to affect a large portion of the US and Canada, bringing heavy snow, freezing rain, flooding, and raising the death toll.

The winter storm has killed at least 30 people so far and caused travel chaos across the US. Stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the Mexican border, the storm swept across the US. More than 55 million people remain under wind chill alerts, and freeze warnings are in effect across the South. Some major cities in the Southeast, Midwest, and



East Coast recorded their coldest Christmas in decades. The western US state of Montana is the worst hit by the cold, with temperatures dropping to minus 45 degree Celsius.

According to the US National Weather Service, about 60% of the population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning and temperatures.

Thousands of flights have been cancelled during the festive period.

Much of the rest of Canada, from British Columbia to Newfoundland, was under extreme cold and winter storm warnings.