U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ plane, Air Force Two, was forced to divert to a Washington-area airport on Jan. 9 due to bad weather, The White House has confirmed.
The aircraft was diverted to Dulles International Airport while Ms. Harris was returning from a trip to Georgia, Atlanta, officials said.
The Vice President had earlier on Tuesday met with community leaders in Atlanta to discuss protecting voting rights at the national, state, and local level and “the ongoing threats to ballot access,” according to a White House
press release.
“Tonight, en route from Atlanta, GA, Air Force 2 was diverted from Joint Base Andrews to Dulles International Airport due to inclement weather,” Kirsten Allen, press secretary to Ms. Harris,
said in a post on X.
“Air Force 2 landed safely at Dulles and all passengers are safe,” Ms. Allen added.
Ms. Harris is now home, officials said.
The diversion comes as stormy weather continues to batter parts of the United States. A total of 49 states were under various weather alerts issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) on Monday as the fast-moving winter storm moved across the country.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden
urged Americans to follow weather guidance issued by local officials.
“Countless communities in the central and eastern U.S. are experiencing flooding, tornadoes, and heavy snowfall as a powerful winter storm moves across the country,” President Biden wrote on X. “I urge everyone to follow the guidance of local officials. Visit
ready.gov for more information.”
1 Dead in Georgia
In Atlanta, the Atlanta Department of Watershed Management
warned residents to keep a close eye on local weather advisories ahead of a “strong low-pressure system that may produce heavy rainfall, high winds, and potentially localized flooding.”
Weather watches and warnings related to severe weather were
cleared from North and Central Georgia later on Tuesday after the storm had swept through the state, downing power lines and trees, and leaving at least one person dead in Georgia, according to reports.
Police in Clayton County
identified the victim as 78-year-old Herbert Lee Williams and confirmed he died after a tree fell on his vehicle on Highway 54 and Jenni Lane.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp
confirmed the man’s death during a press conference on Tuesday and asked residents to keep the victim and his family in their thoughts and prayers, adding that it had been a “rough day” during the stormy weather.
Scattered showers are expected to remain across some parts of Georgia until the early hours of Wednesday morning,
according to the NWS.
Elsewhere, the winter storm knocked out power to over 302,000 homes and businesses in nine states across the eastern half of the U.S., including Georgia.
According to
data from PowerOutage.us, as of the early hours of Wednesday morning, more than 20,000 customers in Georgia were without power, while New York suffered 168,100 outages, Pennsylvania saw 136,905 outages, and Florida was hit with more than 18,000 outages.
The storm is currently blanketing an area extending from Minnesota in the north to Alabama in the south, and from Kansas in the west to North Carolina in the east, bringing snow, rain, winds, and hazardous conditions,
according to the Weather Prediction Center.
Reuters contributed to this report.
