200 million wake up to 1st major snow of season, extreme cold
Freeze Alerts – Latest Map (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — More than 200 million people are waking up to an early blast of winter with the first major snowfall of the season and the coldest temperatures, too.
Parts of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan saw more than 1 foot of lake effect snow.
Flurries even fell in Nashville, Tennessee, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
On Tuesday morning, the snow is still falling in Buffalo and Syracuse in upstate New York, as well parts of Pennsylvania.
That lake effect snow in upstate New York will continue Tuesday and into Wednesday morning off Lakes Erie and Ontario. Two to 4 inches of additional snowfall is possible before it turns to rain on Wednesday.
The cold blast is also expected to bring daily record low temperatures to dozens of cities in the Southeast, from Knoxville, Tennessee, to the Florida Keys.
Freeze warnings are in place Tuesday morning in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.
The high temperature on Tuesday will only hit 48 degrees in Raleigh, North Carolina; 50 degrees in Atlanta; 53 degrees in Jacksonville, Florida; 57 in Orlando, Florida; and 68 in Miami.
And the Mid-Atlantic and southern New England are facing wind gusts of 35 to 50 mph on Tuesday, making the cold temperatures there feel even colder.
(NEW YORK) — A United Airlines flight diverted to Salt Lake City last week after an object struck the plane’s windshield at 36,000 feet, causing it to crack and injuring the pilot, according to the airline and officials.
Amid the mystery of what could have hit the plane’s windshield, on Monday night, WindBorne Systems, a long-duration smart weather balloon company, released a statement saying the object that hit and cracked United flight’s windshield may have been a weather balloon from the company.
The company said it is working with FAA and the NTSB on the investigation.
“We are working closely with the FAA on this matter. We immediately rolled out changes to minimize time spent between 30,000 and 40,000 feet. These changes are already live with immediate effect. Additionally, we are further accelerating our plans to use live flight data to autonomously avoid planes, even if the planes are at a non-standard altitude. We are also actively working on new hardware designs to further reduce impact force magnitude and concentration,” WindBorne said in a statement.
The windshield is being transported to the National Transportation Safety Board’s laboratory as the investigation continues.
Data from flight tracking website Flight Radar24 shows the plane was 36,000 feet in the air when an object hit the windshield. The flight then descended to a lower altitude, following standard protocol, before making an emergency landing at Utah’s Salt Lake City International Airport.
“This is an extraordinary situation in terms of the glass being able to create any damage at all to the people in the cockpit, and what it might have hit at 36,000 feet. That’s really the great puzzle,” said ABC News aviation analyst John Nance.
Aircraft windshields are designed with multiple layers to be able to sustain damage caused by things like a bird strike, weather or even debris, but experts say it’s rare for it to be a bird strike that high in the sky.
“You’re talking about a bird at that altitude. It’s very, very rare to say the least, you’re talking about maybe a drone, a weather balloon, anything of that nature that has enough mass to be able to cause this kind of shattering,” said Nance.
United Airlines said the Boeing 737-MAX 8 with 134 passengers landed safely in Utah “to address damage to its multilayered windshield.” Officials said the pilot was treated for minor injuries.
Heather Ramsey, a college student and a passenger onboard, said she first noticed something was weird about 50 minutes into the flight, even before any announcements, when she overheard one of the flight attendants sharply raising her voice and telling the other to stop the service and get to the back of the cabin.
Shortly after, Ramsey said the pilot made an announcement of the flight diverting.
“The aircraft has collided with an object and a window in the cockpit has shattered, so we need to make an emergency landing in Salt Lake City,” Ramsey told ABC News, recalling the pilot’s message.
The images of the cracked windshield were first shared on social media by aviation account JonNYC.
The airline said passengers were accommodated on another aircraft to Los Angeles later that day and United is working with its team to return the plane to service.
(LOS ANGELES) — Jake Haro, the father of missing 7-month-old Emmanuel Haro, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to the baby’s murder.
He was also sentenced to over six years in prison for other offenses, to run consecutively.
He is ineligible for probation because he was already on probation for severely abusing another child, the judge said while handing down the sentence on Monday.
His sentence also included more than $20,000 in fines and court fees.
Prior to the sentencing, the defense objected to imposing any court fees or fines, saying Jake Haro is indigent and a public defender client.
In response, the prosecutor said the defendant “deserves no leniency.”
Last month, the 32-year-old father pleaded guilty to all charges, including second-degree murder, assault causing bodily harm to a child resulting in the death of said child and filing a false police report, according to court records.
The father, who previously pleaded not guilty with his wife Rebecca Haro in September, cried in court when he was giving his plea on Oct. 16.
Emmanuel’s mother, 41-year-old Rebecca Haro, pleaded not guilty to an amended complaint in October, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for Monday. It remains unclear what is in the complaint, according to Los Angeles ABC station KABC.
The baby’s maternal grandmother, Mary Beushausen, addressed the court during Jake Haro’s sentencing on Monday.
“He destroyed my family,” she told the court. “Everybody in my family, all my children are destroyed by this.”
“He changed my daughter. We don’t know who she is,” she continued. “He kept my daughter away. I don’t know what he did or how he changed my daughter’s life, but she was never that same person after she went to live with him.”
She asked for a lengthy sentence, saying, “I don’t want to give him another chance.”
Officials have not announced whether they have located the baby’s remains.
The 7-month-old was reported missing on Aug. 14 at approximately 7:47 p.m. local time after his mother “reported being attacked outside a retail store on Yucaipa Boulevard,” the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Aug. 15.
When he was reported missing, Emmanuel’s mother told officials that “while she stood outside her vehicle, changing the child’s diaper, she was physically assaulted by an unknown male and rendered unconscious,” authorities said.
Authorities later said the mother was “confronted with inconsistencies in her initial statement,” leading officials to say they were “unable to rule out foul play in the disappearance of Emmanuel.”
Jake and Rebecca Haro were arrested and charged for the child’s murder on Aug. 22, officials said.
In August, officials announced they had a “pretty strong indication” on the location of the child’s remains and said they believed Emmanuel was “severely abused over a period of time.”
Jake Haro was even seen searching a field near the 60 freeway in Moreno Valley in late August with law enforcement, but no remains were apparently found.
“The filing in this case reflects our belief that baby Emmanuel was abused over time and that eventually because of that abuse, he succumbed to those injuries,” Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin said during a press conference in August.
Hestrin said Jake Haro, who he described as an “experienced child abuser,” “should have gone to prison” due to previously abusing another child he had with his ex-wife in 2018, but a judge at the time granted him probation — a ruling Hestrin called an “outrageous error in judgment.” Authorities said the child in that case has been left bedridden.
“If that judge had done his job as he should have done, Emmanuel would be alive today,” Hestrin said in August.
(SAN DIEGO) — Three federal officers were injured after a man, who Immigration and Customs Enforcement said is in the country illegally, allegedly rammed his car into their vehicles to evade arrest, according to the agency.
The incident occurred on Wednesday when the suspect rammed his vehicle, “striking ICE officers before crashing into multiple government vehicles,” ICE San Diego Field Office Director Patrick Divver said.
The suspect was in the U.S. illegally from Kuwait and had a “final order of deportation from the United States,” Divver said.
“This illegal criminal alien who is wanted in his home country of Kuwait and who has a violent criminal history, weaponized his vehicle to narrowly miss hitting an innocent bystanders and striking ICE officers before crashing into multiple government vehicles,” Divver said in a statement to ABC News.
The identity of the suspect was not released by ICE.
Michael Burreec, a witness to the car ramming, told ABC San Diego affiliate KGTV that the incident occurred in a residential neighborhood with a 20 mph speed zone and a day care center nearby.
Divver said the suspect’s “blatant disregard for human life and the rule of the law is exactly why ICE San Diego will continue to pursue, arrest and remove dangerous illegal aliens who threaten our communities.”
The three injured federal officers and the suspect were treated at a local hospital, Divver said. ICE will pursue criminal charges against the suspect for “assaulting, resisting, opposing, and impeding” federal officers, he added.
“This is another unfortunate example of the continued misinformed and unjust rhetoric against ICE empowering individuals to flee and assault federal officers conducting lawful enforcement actions in accordance with applicable congressionally approved federal law,” Divver said.
