CNN news 2013-02-26 加文本

cnn news 2013-02-26

Usually on cnn Student News we say how Fridays are awesome, for a lot of the U.S., this Friday is frozen. You expect snow and cold temperatures in the winter. What makes this storm different is that's huge. Around 60 million people, we are talking 20% of the entire U.S. population, potentially affected by this. Governors and mayors have declared states of emergency. The area that's being hit is roughly the same size as Mexico. And the storm is bringing some unusual weather. Probably haven't seen or heard that too often, it's called thunder snow. And you need the right ingredients for it to happen: cold air on top of warm air with moist air close to the ground. This massive winter storm is causing travel problems like what cnn's Ted Rowlands ran into outside Kansas City.

"The freeways here are a mess. An absolute mess. I was stuck on I-29 for about an hour and a half just dead still, I've gone on 35, I-70, all of it a mess. And though biggest part is not the visibility, but this snow accumulation is just, piling up, and people are getting stuck, spinning out. There's trucks all over the road, there've been a couple of medical emergencies which, of course, has made it very difficult that the snow makes it very difficult for first responders to get to those people. And the bottom line is they warn people do not drive in these conditions. There's a reason why. This storm is a whopper."

There might be a silver lining here. Some of the states getting hit have been dealing with the terrible drought. So when all this snow melts, the water could help relieve some of those drought issues.

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