Winter storm hammers eastern US; over 60 million face blizzard conditions

At least 62 million people are in the path of the storm as state of emergency declared in several US states.

A severe winter storm has hammered the United States, with meteorologists warning more than 60 million people in the country’s east faced blizzard conditions and some areas would see the heaviest snowfall in a decade.

The National Weather Service (NWS) on Sunday warned of ice, snow and gale-force winds in states from the central plains to the mid-Atlantic.

A state of emergency has been declared in Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia.

More than 60 million people are in the path of the dangerous storm, set to plunge the eastern half of the US into a deep freeze of Arctic air through Monday, resulting in severe travel disruptions.

Winter storm warnings have been issued from western Kansas to the coastal states of Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, an unusually broad 2,400km (1,500-mile) swath under immediate threat.

“Disruptive winter storm to impact the Central Plains to the Mid-Atlantic through Monday with widespread heavy snow and damaging ice accumulations,” the NWS said in its latest report.

The agency warned that areas from northeastern Kansas to north-central Missouri would see “the heaviest snowfall in a decade”.

Scientists say extreme weather is becoming more common and more severe as a result of man-made climate change.

Flights disrupted

The first major storm of 2025 was already wreaking havoc on travel, with Kansas City International Airport announcing closure of its flight operations Saturday “due to rapid ice accumulation”.

Flight operations resumed later after airfield runways and taxiways were treated, Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas said in a social media post.

Temperatures are expected to plunge, in some places to below zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius) while the US capital Washington could be blanketed in five inches or more of snow.

Another major concern is freezing rain and sleet expected from Kansas eastward to Kentucky and Virginia, setting the stage for thick ice to coat roads, making travel hazardous, bringing down trees and electricity lines, and potentially leaving millions of customers without power during a cold snap.

Conditions could prove especially perilous in the Appalachians, where a deadly hurricane in late September devastated communities and ravaged multiple southeastern states including Kentucky.

Many of those communities are still recovering from the effects of that hurricane.

The new storm “will likely cause significant disruption and dangerous conditions on our roads and could cause significant power outages just 24 hours or so before it’s going to get really cold in Kentucky”, Governor Andy Beshear told an emergency meeting.