Widespread snowstorms bring travel chaos to US

Tens of millions of Americans were in the pathway of dangerous and damaging weather conditions as snowstorms bore down on the Northwest and Midwest, flooding threatened the East Coast and potential tornadoes were on tap in the South.

Airlines cancelled or delayed more than 3600 flights across the US on Friday, including planes grounded at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport due to winds and blinding snow.

Residents in wide swathes of the Midwest were getting walloped on Friday morning with blizzard-like conditions featuring heavy snows and fierce winds of up to 100kmh that were expected to continue into Saturday, the National Weather Service (NWS) warned.

“If you’re out on the roads this morning, you’re not going to have a good time … consider postponing travel this morning,” the NWS said on social media platform X. It noted that visibility on some roads in Chicago was less than half a mile.

“This storm system is definitely dangerous,” said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the NWS’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

“Dangerous whiteouts in the Great Lakes region and upper Midwest. Blizzard and near-blizzard conditions,” he said.

There were 190,000 power outages across five states including Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Arkansas and Tennessee, according to the tracking site Poweroutage.us

By midmorning on Saturday, there could be seven to 15cm of snow in downtown Chicago. Throughout Friday, as the snow falls, strong winds could bring whiteout conditions.

Chicago Public Schools remained open while dozens of other districts across the metro region canceled in-person classes for the day.

The snow and wind caused more than 700 flights to be cancelled or delayed in and out of O’Hare International Airport, on Friday morning. In all, some 3600 flights had been cancelled or delayed, according to Flightaware.com

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is expected to receive some of the heaviest snow as the blizzard will drop 30 to 45cm, with wind gusts up to 64kmh through the weekend.

Western New York, including Buffalo, could be clobbered with more than 30cm of snow. But after this system pushes east, “lake-effect” snow could bring several more inches through Monday to the Buffalo area.

Another 13 million people who live near the Atlantic Ocean or large waterways in Virginia north into New England were under the threat of flooding from heavy rains and snows over the past few days.

The bad weather is hitting much of the US, forecasters said.

To the south in Mississippi, some three million people were under the threat of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms as the NWS warned that the winds of up to 100kmh could damage roofs and take down trees and power lines.

A winter storm system was also hitting the Pacific Northwest on Friday, and tracking through the Central Rockies with heavy snow that could drop “a couple feet of snow” at the higher elevations over the weekend, Taylor said.

Early next week, arctic air pushing south is expected to bring dangerously cold conditions to much of the US.