A lot of snow, rain and cold weather await travelers for the rest of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, with winter storm warnings posted Friday across the northern part of the country and more snow falling over the Great Lakes region.
Storm warnings and advisories extended from Montana to New York, the National Weather Service said.
“Anybody out shopping for Black Friday in these areas from Cleveland to upstate New York and even into New England are going to deal with some issues out on the roadways,” CBS News Philadelphia meteorologist Andrew Kozak said. Up to 42 million people could be impacted by the storm, he said, as the system moves across the northern Plains.
More than 81.8 million people were predicted to travel 50 miles or more during the Thanksgiving holiday period, AAA said. The Transportation Security Administration said the agency is planning to screen more than 3 million travelers on Sunday. Adam Stahl, the senior official performing the duties of the deputy TSA administrator, said in a statement, “We are projecting that the Sunday after Thanksgiving will be one of the busiest travel days in TSA history.”
Snow was expected to start Friday and last well into the weekend in some areas with Iowa and Illinois getting the brunt of it. Six inches to a foot of snow is expected in much of west-central Illinois on Friday night through Saturday night.
A man shovels snow outside a church in Lowville, New York, Nov. 28, 2025.
AP Photo/Cara Anna
Chicago — a huge travel hub — could see anywhere from 8 to 12 inches of snow or even more, Kozak said. That could have a domino effect for the major airports. Heavy snow is forecast for Saturday, he said.
Airlines for America, the trade association for the leading U.S. airlines, predicted that carriers will fly a record 31 million passengers from last Friday through this coming Monday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday that the TSA is back to staffing levels from before the government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, which led to reductions in flights.
So far, forecast conditions do not meet blizzard warning criteria, meteorologists said — winds of at least 35 mph, visibilities of less than a quarter mile and lasting more than three hours.
A storm that already brought snow to parts of the northern Plains states and the Great Lakes region continued Friday. Snowfall totals of at least a foot were expected by the end of the storm, particularly downwind of Lake Superior across the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan and downwind of lakes Erie and Ontario, the weather service said. Areas of central New York state could see a foot of snow. Gusty winds may lead to periods of blowing snow with hazardous post-Thanksgiving travel conditions expected, the weather service said. Below-average and chilly temperatures are expected to hit most of the eastern and central U.S. heading into the weekend.
Snow squalls Friday are forecast to bring quick bursts of heavy snow and dangerous, whiteout conditions for driving were possible across the interior Northeast, the weather service said.
The National Digital Forecast Database depicts expected weather across the nation for post-Thanksgiving travel.
National Weather Service
In the Pacific Northwest and the Rockies, a combination of snow and rain was expected Friday. By Saturday, the snow will taper off for the Rockies and northern Plains, but continue on to the Midwest. Conditions are expected to improve overnight into Sunday morning in the Midwest, as rain hits the Northeast. Kozak said that the I-95 corridor will miss the “big snow” through the end of the weekend.
To the south, storms — some of them heavy — are in the forecast, with some flash flooding possible Saturday in the western Gulf Coast.
Freezing temperatures are continuing their hold on several parts of the U.S., from the Great Plains to the East Coast. Meteorologist Molly McCollum with The Weather Channel has the forecast.
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Winter storm warnings and advisories were in effect in nine states Wednesday as freezing temperatures continue to plague many parts of the U.S. Carter Evans reports from Oregon, which has been hard-hit by a string of deadly storms.
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A massive winter storm is expected to bring heavy snow and a torrent of rain to most of the northern United States this week, “with almost all of the country experiencing some form of notable weather,” forecasters said Tuesday.
The upper-level pattern will intensify in the coming days as millions of people, from the Pacific Northwest to the Northeast, brace for an oncoming blanket of snow, frozen rain, strong winds and potential flash flooding that prompted winter weather alerts in 23 states, with six states under blizzard warnings. This week’s coast-to-coast storm system “will bring numerous weather hazards and significantly anomalous temperatures” stretching from Washington to Maine.
Particularly severe conditions are expected in some midwestern states, including Minnesota. Minneapolis is on track for its second-biggest snowfall of all time. Snow emergencies have been declared as double-digit snowfall is expected around the Twin Cities. Travel conditions will be very difficult, if not impossible, around the Midwest, with winds gusting 40-50 mph across Interstates 90 80, 29 and 35.
Minneapolis Public Schools announced it will close all buildings and move to e-learning for all students for the rest of the week, CBS Minnesota reported. All Minneapolis Public Schools sponsored programs will also be shut down for the week.
That is far from the only place preparing for an onslaught of winter weather, as roughly a foot of snow is expected to cover Salt Lake City between Tuesday and Wednesday, while Denver will likely get about six inches with another two feet of snow expected in the Rocky Mountains.
Heavy ice is anticipated across southern Michigan, including Detroit, which could likely bring traffic to a standstill and cause power outages.
A prolonged major winter storm will spread a large swath of heavy snow from the West Coast to the Northeast today through Friday, and confidence is high that this winter storm will be extremely disruptive to travel, infrastructure, livestock, and recreation in affected areas. pic.twitter.com/0hWhXWAdfE
Different areas of the country are also expected to see record-breaking temperatures — at different ends of the spectrum. As the winter storm calms across the Midwest and Northeast, weather stations east of the Ohio River and across the South are expected to break 90 records for high temperatures Thursday, including in Washington, D.C., which is expected to see 80 degrees Fahrenheit; Orlando, 90 degrees; New Orleans, 83 degrees; Louisville, 77 degrees; and Raleigh, 86 degrees.
Conversely, cities along the West Coast of the U.S. are expected to set records for the coldest high temperatures over the same time period, with a high of 49 degrees expected in Burbank, a high of 48 degrees in San Francisco, a high of 32 degrees in Portland and zero degrees in Billings, Montana.
A major winter storm is set to impact millions this week from coast to coast.
CNN Weather
“Beyond the numerous weather hazards expected this week, another major story will be the significantly anomalous warm temperatures for February over the East and cold temperatures over the West,” reads an advisory released by the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, which noted that temperatures highs on Wednesday “will be 20-30 degrees above average for many locations across the Southern Plains, Midwest, and Southeast and 20-30 degrees below average over the Northern/Central Plains and much of the West.”
“Many record-tying/breaking highs are possible particularly for the Ohio/Tennessee Valleys, where temperatures will be into the 70s, and closer to the Gulf Coast/Florida, where highs will be into the 80s,” the advisory added. “Many record-tying/breaking minimum high temperatures will also be possible over the West, with highs in the 30s and 40s for the Pacific Northwest and in the 50s for California. Bitterly cold wind chills 20-30 degrees below zero are expected for the Northern Plains. These highly anomalous temperatures are forecast to continue later into the week.”
Millions of people hunkered down in a deep freeze overnight and early morning to ride out the frigid storm that has gripped much of the United States, trapping some residents inside homes with heaping snow drifts and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.
CBS News has confirmed at least 20 weather-related deaths from the storm nationwide.
The scope of the storm has been nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60% of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.
Thousands of U.S. flights were canceled Saturday, and another 1,400 as of Sunday morning, according to the tracking site FlightAware.
Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.
The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, with hurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions, paralyzing emergency response efforts — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was stranded — and shutting down the airport through Monday, according to officials.
Snow covers a vehicle on December 24, 2022 in Hamburg, New York. The Buffalo suburb and surrounding area was hit hard by the winter storm with wind gusts over 70 miles per hour over the holiday weekend.
John Normile / Getty Images
Freezing conditions and day-old power outages had Buffalo residents scrambling Saturday to get out of their homes to anywhere that had heat. But with city streets under a thick blanket of white, that wasn’t an option for people like Jeremy Manahan, who charged his phone in his parked car after almost 29 hours without electricity.
“There’s one warming shelter, but that would be too far for me to get to. I can’t drive, obviously, because I’m stuck,” Manahan said. “And you can’t be outside for more than 10 minutes without getting frostbit.”
Mark Poloncarz, executive of Erie County, home to Buffalo, said ambulances were taking more than three hours to make a single hospital trip and the blizzard may be “the worst storm in our community’s history.”
Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, he said, and another died in Buffalo.
“We can’t just pick up everybody and take you to a warming center. We don’t have the capability of doing that,” Poloncarz said. “Many, many neighborhoods, especially in the city of Buffalo, are still impassable.”
Neighboring Niagara County declared a state of emergency and imposed a travel ban on Saturday. The ban was lifted Sunday morning but a travel advisory remains in place.
Ice covers Hoaks restaurant along the Lake Erie shoreline on Dec. 24, 2022 in Hamburg, New York. The Buffalo suburb and surrounding area was hit hard by the winter storm with wind gusts over 70 miles per hour.
John Normile / Getty Images
Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was on his way to visit relatives in Hamilton, Ontario, for Christmas with his daughters Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo. Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running in the vehicle buffeted by wind and nearly buried in snow.
By 4 a.m. Saturday, with their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby shelter. He carried 6-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, stepping into his footprints as they trudged through drifts.
“If I stay in this car I’m going to die here with my kids,” he recalled thinking, but believing they had to try. He cried when the family walked through the shelter doors. “It’s something I will never forget in my life.”
The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle, and a major electricity grid operator warned 65 million people across the eastern U.S. of possible rolling blackouts.
Residents in the New York City metro area were urged to set their thermostats lower and reduce other energy usage due to the increased demand for heating in the extreme cold.
Due to extreme cold & increased demand, @ConEdison & @nationalgridus are urging customers to conserve natural gas — if safe to do so — through tomorrow afternoon.
Set thermostats to a lower, comfortable temperature & use large appliances only as needed.
Across the six New England states, more than 273,000 customers remained without power on Saturday, with Maine the hardest hit. Some utilities said electricity may not be restored for days.
In North Carolina, 169,000 customers were without power Saturday afternoon, down from more than 485,000. Utility officials said rolling blackouts would continue for the next few days.
Storm-related deaths were reported in recent days all over the country: Four dead in an Ohio Turnpike pileup involving some 50 vehicles; four motorists killed in separate crashes in Missouri and Kansas; an Ohio utility worker electrocuted; a Vermont woman struck by a falling branch; an apparently homeless man found amid Colorado’s subzero temperatures; a woman who fell through Wisconsin river ice.
In some areas along the East Coast, frozen floodwaters caused further misery. CBS New York reports cars were trapped in New Jersey and some homes flooded in the Queens neighborhood of Howard Beach. An American Red Cross reception center at a local school offered help on Friday and Saturday.
“People just need to go to a place that’s warm,” said Frank Farance. “We’ve had about 15 clients and I would say about half of them roughly have needed housing. … Some people just need the cleaning kit to recover.”
In Mexico, migrants camped near the U.S. border were facing unusually cold temperatures as they awaited a U.S. Supreme Court decision on pandemic-era restrictions preventing many from seeking asylum.
Along Interstate 71 in Kentucky, Terry Henderson and her husband, Rick, weathered a 34-hour traffic jam in a rig outfitted with a diesel heater, a toilet and a refrigerator after getting stuck trying to drive from Alabama to their Ohio home for Christmas.
“We should have stayed,” Terry Henderson said after they got moving again Saturday.
Poloncarz of Erie County tweeted late Saturday that 34.6 inches of snow had accumulated at the Buffalo Airport and drifts were well over 6 feet in some areas. Blizzard conditions were expected to ease early Sunday, he continued, but continuing lake effect snow was forecast.
Christmas decorations are covered in snow on December 24, 2022 in Hamburg, New York. The Buffalo suburb and surrounding area was hit hard by the winter storm, with wind gusts over 70 miles per hour over the holiday weekend.
John Normile / Getty Images
The Buffalo area had just been hit last month with another record storm dumping over 6 feet of snow in some areas.
Vivian Robinson of Spirit of Truth Urban Ministry in Buffalo said she and her husband have been sheltering and cooking for 60 to 70 people, including stranded travelers and locals without power or heat, who were spending Saturday night at the church.
Many arrived with ice and snow plastered to their clothes, crying, their skin reddened by the single-digit temperatures. On Saturday night, they prepared to spend Christmas together.
“It’s emotional just to see the hurt that they thought they were not going to make it, and to see that we had opened up the church, and it gave them a sense of relief,” Robinson said. “Those who are here are really enjoying themselves. It’s going to be a different Christmas for everyone.”
Forecasters said freezing temperatures were expected to linger a few more days but then begin to ease, with milder temperatures in store by the middle of the week.
