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CARL AZUZ: Blizzard conditions in the true sense of the word.
What does that even mean?
That is our first subject on this last day of January.
I'm Carl Azuz.
Welcome to the snow-- the show.
January 1987, Atlantic City, New Jersey,
sees a record amount of snowfall, 20.3 inches.
January 2022, the city's monthly record is shattered
with 33.2 inches of snow.
A lot of that was the effect of a winter storm
that broke snowfall records all across the Northeast.
With 14 inches on Saturday alone, Atlantic City doubled
its previous one day record.
Boston, Massachusetts; New York, New York;
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; they all saw their snowiest day ever
on Saturday.
Roads were treacherous.
Almost 3,600 flights were canceled on Saturday alone.
The nor'easter, a storm with winds out of the Northeast,
brought gusts as high as 40 miles per hour.
That's the strength of a tropical storm.
The floodwaters had spilled into part of Massachusetts
were four feet high, and the wind
chills it left behind in the region on Sunday dropped
below 0 degrees Fahrenheit.
This was not a good time to lose electricity,
but more than 88,000 homes and businesses in the Northeast
did see their power go out Saturday,
according to PowerOutage.us.
Those numbers had improved a lot by Sunday afternoon, though.
Snow, followed by below freezing temperatures,
dipped as far South as Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,
and though the weather is expected
to warm up as the week gets underway,
there's another winter storm coming.
It's expected to start hitting the Midwest on Tuesday
night, and bring colder temperatures across the East
by next weekend.
As many people in states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island
dig out from this weekend's weather,
they might be wondering if they were
hit by a bona fide blizzard.
The answer is yes.
PEDRAM JAVAHERI: You hear it all the time.
It's one of the most overused terms in weather.
A blizzard warning, and a blizzard conditions,
have to be signified when you have snow coming down,
you have your winds that are at least at 35 miles per hour
or greater, and your visibility is reduced
to under a quarter of one mile.
And not only do you have to have all these in place,
you have to have this happening for at least three hours
or a longer period of time for a blizzard warning to be issued.
One thing to note with blizzard conditions
is, once the storm moves, even when the snow has stopped
falling, you could be experiencing
blizzard like conditions because the winds will
be howling across the area.
So, any sort of drift snow that has been on the ground
there will be blown right in front of you,
and that will cause disruptions as far as visibility
once again coming down.
Even though the storm is long gone,
you will still be experiencing blizzard conditions.
Now a fascinating study was done back in 2002,
looking at the most prone area across the United States
where blizzards occurred, and the most frequented area
for blizzards were areas around the Dakotas,
Western Minnesota, on into Wyoming,
and eventually Eastern Colorado.
That region saw the highest likelihood of blizzards
every single year.
But, that study also showed about 2 and 1/2
million people per year experience
these blizzard like conditions.
Now you displace that into the upper Midwest;
take it, say, into Chicago, or take it into the Northeast,
into Boston, Philadelphia, or New York?
Now you're talking about tens of millions of people being
impacted by blizzard conditions, and that
is when this story becomes very dangerous for a lot of people.
CARL AZUZ: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has 446 bridges,
more than any other city in the United States, and one of them
collapsed last Friday morning, just
hours before President Joe Biden was
scheduled to visit Pittsburgh.
It happened sometime around 6 o'clock.
Officials say four vehicles were crossing it at the time,
and 10 people were hurt in the collapse.
First responders rapelled down to the victims to help them,
and also formed a daisy chain by holding hands
to get people out of the valley.
The collapse broke a natural gas line in the area,
and there were reports of some people
feeling sick from inhaling the gas, but no one was killed.
And a Pittsburgh City Council member
said it was fortunate that the collapse didn't happen
a little later in the morning, because hundreds of cars
might have been involved if this had occurred during rush hour.
President Biden did complete his trip there Friday.
Ironically, he was in Pittsburgh to discuss infrastructure;
the nation's buildings, roads, and bridges.
He talked about the collapse in his speech.
JOE BIDEN: It had been rated in poor condition
for the past 10 years.
What you all know-- if you don't, you should know--
there are another 3,300 bridges here in Pennsylvania,
some of which are just as old.
And we're going to rebuild that bridge,
along with thousands of other bridges
in Pennsylvania and across the country.
CARL AZUZ: The President had signed a bipartisan $1.2
trillion infrastructure bill last November,
but critics say not nearly enough of that money
has been set aside to repair the nation's bridges,
and the one that collapsed Friday
was not originally on the government's list
for improvements, according to NBC News.
It was last inspected in September.
A fire chief said despite its poor rating,
officials hadn't been concerned about it before the collapse.
The National Transportation Safety Board
sent a team to the site to try to figure
out exactly what went wrong.
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CARL AZUZ: 10 second trivia!
What is the world's largest airline?
American Airlines, China Southern Airlines,
Delta Airlines, or Lufthansa?
By several different measurements
including fleets in seats, American is the largest
airline in the world.
CARL AZUZ: We've talked about the ongoing labor
shortage in America.
Help is also wanted in the skies above it.
Airlines in the US expect to need
at least 12,000 pilots by next year, and even more after that.
Not enough pay, long and expensive training, furloughs,
being put on leave without pay.
These are some of the major complaints
pilots have had over the years.
Airlines are raising salaries and making changes
to address these issues, and one major carrier
has launched its own program to help train new pilots.
Over the past few months, United Airlines
has faced lawsuits over plans to fire roughly 600 people who
refused to get a COVID vaccine it now requires,
and the 2,000 others who got a religious or medical exemption
to United's mandate were put on leave without pay.
We don't know how many of those employees are pilots,
but pilots are the focus of its new training program.
ADELA GALLEGOS: Prop clear!
CARL AZUZ: In the Arizona desert,
United Airlines is growing pilots.
Student pilot Adela Gallegos had no flying
experience only last month.
Now, she has her sights set on her first solo flight,
on the way to the pilot seat of a United jet.
ADELA GALLEGOS: I like the control.
I like the freedom.
I like being in the air
CARL AZUZ: This is United's new Aviate
Academy, the only flight school owned by a major US airline.
It is the newest fix for an industry wide problem.
Airlines that got smaller during the pandemic
are now looking to hire again.
American Airlines wants to add 2,000 pilots this year.
Delta Airlines plans to hire as many as 200 a month.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby says the goal here is
to train 500 pilots annually.
SCOTT KIRBY: The pilot shortage is real.
We can hire pilots at United Airlines,
but the regional airlines and smaller airlines
have a real pilot shortage, and are having real challenges.
CARL AZUZ: Over the holidays, airlines canceled more
than 18,000 flights in the US.
Coronavirus sick calls compounded crew shortages.
Faye Malarkey Black heads the Regional Airline Association.
FAYE MALARKEY BLACK: I think a mistake we would make
is to treat this like it's temporary.
This is a problem that's real, it's present,
it's already affected air service,
and it's going to get worse if we
don't intervene now and give people
a real path into this career.
CARL AZUZ: The latest estimate that airlines worldwide
will need at least 34,000 new pilots by 2025,
but entry level flying jobs require
1,500 hours of experience.
SCOTT KIRBY: The problem is the barriers to entry.
This is the model, really about creating
that economic opportunity.
To let people come in who don't have $100,000 to spend
on their certification, but have great potential, great ability.
CARL AZUZ: Tuition here is $71,000.
When they graduate, students could get hired
by a United partner company.
First as a flight instructor, then at a regional airline,
and ultimately with United.
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CARL AZUZ: Murder!
Not usually a topic for our fun and games 10 Out Of 10 segment,
but we're talking about a murder of crows.
Yes, a group of them is called a murder.
They've been occupying the town square
in Sunnyvale, California.
Why?
That's a mystery.
They've been doing this for years,
and even more since COVID.
They're noisy, they're dirty if you walk under them,
and the city has tried everything from laser pointers
to scarecrows to scare off the real crows.
So, people have been swarming with a string
of ideas on how to herd the scourging
plague out of their nest.
They mustered a cloud of clutch conclusions, a brooding siege
of solutions, landing only a parcel of collective confusion
over how to end the occlusion and pollution!
It's letting the crows get away with murder, y'all!
Today's shout-out takes us to Queen Creek, Arizona,
where we're running with the Colts of Casteel High School,
and I'm Carl Azuz for CNN.
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