COLUMBUS – At least two deaths in Ohio are being blamed on the latest blast of winter that walloped the South and reached all the way into New England Tuesday.
In Ohio snow mainly fell northwest of the I-71 corridor, dumping more than a foot of snow across Toledo and its surrounding counties, with a mix of sleet and snow elsewhere,.
In central Ohio, 2,2 inches were recorded at John Glenn Columbus International Airport, 4 inches fell near Blendon Woods Metro Park on the Northeast Side, 4 ½ inches were reported west of Hilliard and 6 inches in New Albany.
One person was killed in Medina County and another near Toledo.
The fatality in Medina County occurred when a motorist crashed into an Ohio Department of Transportation snowplow truck. Eleven ODOT vehicles have been involved in accidents over the last two weeks, compared with eight such incidents during all of the winter of 2019-20, director Jack Marchbanks said.
The storm shut down several COVID-19 vaccination sites in Columbus, Toledo, Dayton and several counties in western Ohio and could delay vaccine shipments from drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna.
“We have been told that, due to severe weather across Ohio and the country, some of these shipments are delayed, sometimes by a day, sometimes by two days,” DeWine said at his Tuesday afternoon pandemic briefing.
Vaccine providers scheduled to receive a vaccine parcel today from Ohio’s Receipt, Store, and Stage Warehouse are receiving their deliveries on a two-hour delay.
He says Ohioans who haven’t heard from their provider and are concerned about whether or not their appointment is still scheduled should contact their provider or visit their website.
The state administered 30,124 doses of the vaccine on Monday.
Another round of snow is forecast to begin Wednesday evening with snowfall amounts of 2 to 4 inches expected southeast of I-71 where a Winter Weather Advisory is in effect (see illustration). The national Weather Service says additional accumulations of 1 to 3 are possible outside of the advisory area.
“There’s really no letup to some of the misery people are feeling across that area,” said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service.
The storm overwhelmed power grids and immobilized the Southern Plains carried heavy snow and freezing rain into New England and the Deep South and left behind painfully low temperatures. In all, at least 20 deaths were reported.
Meteorologists blame the all-too-familiar polar vortex.
The cold air that’s normally penned up in the high Arctic got slammed by an atmospheric wave in late December. It broke apart in early January and moved out of its normal area. The result has been crazy winter weather. It was warmer Tuesday in parts of Greenland, Alaska, Norway and Sweden than in Texas and Oklahoma.
Scientists say polar vortex breakdown or disruption used to happen once every other year or so, but research shows they are now close to happening yearly, if not more.
They are calling this version one of the biggest, nastiest and longest-lasting ones they’ve seen, and they’ve been watching since at least the 1950s.