More than 1 million without power across US amid winter storm

More than 1 million people in the United States are without power as a strong winter storm has swept across the country, dropping temperatures well below freezing in many states.

A plurality of the outages are occurring in New England, where more than 500,000 customers were without power as of Friday evening, according to the power outage tracking website poweroutage.us. That includes almost 250,000 customers in Maine and more than 100,000 in New Hampshire.

More than 50,000 customers are without power in each of more than half a dozen states on the east coast, from New York and Massachusetts down to North Carolina. More than 10,000 customers are experiencing outages in each of a dozen other states.

The storm, which The Weather Channel is calling Winter Storm Elliott, also caused more than 8,000 flights to be canceled and 24,000 more to be delayed on Friday as one of the busiest holiday travel weekends gets underway, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.

The National Weather Service said on Friday that more than 200 million people were under a winter weather advisory or warning, making up about 60 percent of the U.S. population. Forecasters said the map showed one of the widest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever.

The front created a bomb cyclone, a storm that happens when a midlatitude system rapidly intensifies and significantly drops in atmospheric pressure, near the Great Lakes, bringing blizzard conditions to the area.

Officials have said that crashes have claimed at least six lives in various parts of the country as a result of the storm.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.