A huge winter storm Elliot hit the United States on Thursday, bringing heavy snow, high winds and cold, disrupting travel plans for the Christmas holiday.As a result, more than 2300 flights across the United States have been cancelled.

At least five states in the United States have contingency plans in place, including Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Georgia and North Carolina; other states are likely to follow, and there may be the worst Arctic storms yet to come.

The storm is called by meteorologistsAn once-in-a-generation storm that can only be experienced once in a lifetime.

It is expected to affect almost every state in the United States, directly impact the Christmas travel of 190 million people, and turn the Midwest into a "white Christmas" within hours.

National Weather Service (NWS) forecaster Michael Charnick posted a video on the social media Twitter showing that the car was struggling on the highway between Colorado and Wyoming.The local temperature plummeted to minus 40 degrees Celsius under the effect of wind chill.

In addition, US President Joe Biden told the media at a White House briefing on weather and traffic chaos:"it's not like when it snowed when people were kids.，This isVerySomething serious. He called on the public to pay attention to the warnings issued by the local authorities.

Forecasters at AccuWeather, a weather forecasting company, say that when atmospheric pressure drops and cold air masses collide with warm air masses, the storm may increase rapidly through the "extreme cyclone generation" (bombogenesis) process."bomb Cyclone" (bomb cyclone), which will seriously affect the safety of aircraft navigation.

As of 10:00 GMT, more than 2200 flights have been cancelled and more than 6900 domestic and inbound and outbound flights have been delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.

Affected by this news, US stocks$Airlines (BK2090.US)$The sector, at the end of trading on Thursday, fell more than 2%.

Among them$American Airlines (AAL.US)$、$Southwest Airlines (LUV.US)$、$JetBlue Airways (JBLU.US)$Fell more than 3% one after another.$Delta Air Lines (DAL.US)$It fell by more than 2%.

The market expects that flight cancellations and delays will last until the weekend, and airlines have also issued ticket exemption announcements one after another, which are expected to generate a certain amount of refund.