Close to a million US households without power in severe winter storm

A severe winter storm in the United States has already left hundreds of thousands of people without power before it was expected to hit New York, Philadelphia and Washington later on Sunday.Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas are among the states worst affected, with some 983,000 households hit by outages nationwide, according to website PowerOutage.us. Some outages were also being reported from Alabama and Kentucky.Nearly 190 million people – more than half of the US population – are facing disruption in one of the country’s worst winter storms in several years, according to the authorities.The storm was expected to spread over a distance of around 3,000 km (1,864 miles) from New Mexico in the southwest to Maine in the northeast over the weekend, the National Weather Service said.It is expected to hit New York on Sunday, while numerous states have declared a state of emergency. It was snowing early Sunday in New York and Washington.Adverse conditions have also caused chaos for travellers with more than 15,000 flights cancelled.Local authorities say heavy snowfall is leading to traffic disruptions and road closures, potentially lasting several days. Ice deposits have created “extremely dangerous” travel conditions in some areas, they said.