Air Force Two carrying Vice President Kamala Harris was forced to divert to another airport on Jan. 9 due to violent weather conditions.
Ms. Harris’s plane was rerouted to a different airport in Washington as she was returning from a trip to Atlanta, Georgia, when the flight encountered stormy weather.
“Tonight, en route from Atlanta, Ga., Air Force 2 was diverted from Joint Base Andrews to Dulles International Airport due to inclement weather,” according to a statement by White House press secretary Kirsten Allen.
According to an unconfirmed report, the aircraft encountered wind shear during the flight. This came as a powerful storm brought high winds and rain to the nation’s capital.
According to the report, no one was injured in the incident. The plane made a safe landing at Dulles and Ms. Harris continued home safely.
Wind shear is a sudden shift in wind direction or speed that can be particularly hazardous during takeoff and landing. It can cause changes to an aircraft’s headwind or tailwind, resulting in abrupt displacement from an aircraft’s intended flight path.
Heavy rains and high winds are continuing into Jan. 10 for parts of Georgia and the East Coast, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
Storm Slams Northeast
A major storm hit the Northeast with fierce winds on Tuesday, part of a series of violent weather systems that affected most of the United States.
The storm, which started Tuesday night and continued Wednesday, washed out roads and took down trees and power lines. Gusts reached 45 mph to 55 mph (72 kph to 88 kph), and more windy weather is expected throughout Wednesday.
The storm followed a day of tornadoes and deadly accidents in the South and blizzard conditions in the Midwest and Northwest.
The wind and rain knocked out services on some train lines in New York City and flooded a highway in the Bronx, impinging on thousands of commuters on Wednesday morning. Heavy snow hit parts of northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine on Wednesday morning.
In Nassau County, New York, video footage showed cars sloshing through water that had collected on the streets of Freeport. Further east, near the Hamptons, the National Weather Service reported major flooding out of Shinnecock Bay. Several schools across Long Island said they were either canceling or delaying classes as a result of the storm.
In Danbury, Connecticut, officials said the snow that melted in the overnight rain had overwhelmed the city’s drainage capacity, leaving a dozen intersections flooded. At least one motorist was rescued from a vehicle.
Powerful winds gusted to 95 mph (153 kph) at Maine’s Isle au Haut, an island in Penobscot Bay, and to 83 mph (134 kph) off the coast of Rye, New Hampshire, according to Jon Palmer from the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine.
Fatal Winds
A number of deaths have been blamed on the storms. An 81-year-old woman in Alabama was killed when her mobile home was tossed from its foundations by a suspected tornado. Another person died in North Carolina after a suspected tornado struck a mobile home park. A man died south of Atlanta when a tree fell on his car. In the Midwest, slushy highways led to the deaths of one driver in Wisconsin and another in Michigan following collisions.
The National Weather Service office in Tallahassee is planning to send out three tornado survey teams on Wednesday to examine suspected tornado damage in Walton, Bay, and Jackson counties in Florida, and two more on Thursday to look at Houston County, Alabama and Calhoun County, Georgia.
Roofs were blown off homes while furniture, fences, and debris were strewn about during the height of the storm in the South.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this article.
