Winter storm leaves at least 17 dead, hundreds of thousands without power

At least 17 people have died and more than one million reports of power outages have been made as Winter Storm Elliott barrels down across the country.

Officials have attributed at least 17 deaths to the storm, due to situations including a massive car pile-up in Ohio and emergency responders not being able to properly respond to a situation in the hard-hit Buffalo region, according to USA Today.

The death toll has more than doubled since Friday when the estimate was about six deaths attributed to the storm.

Below-freezing temperatures in many states combined with widespread power outages is also creating dangerous situations.

More than 300,000 people in the South East and New England regions experienced power outages as of Saturday afternoon. The Mid-Atlantic recorded 159,000 people without power, and in other parts of the country the number fell below 50,000, according to PowerOutage.us.

Maine and North Carolina were hit the hardest, seeing over 180,000 and over 150,000 outages, respectively.

More than 200 million people, or about 60 percent of the population, were placed under winter storm warning or advisory due to Elliott.

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