Overview
- More than 30 million people are under winter alerts with blizzard warnings across parts of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as winds up to 50–60 mph create whiteouts and shut major roads.
- Air and ground travel are heavily disrupted, with a ground stop at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, widespread deicing in the Northeast and power outages surpassing 80,000 in Michigan alongside additional outages in New York and Ohio.
- Snow and rain are shifting east, while ice storm warnings in northeast New York and Vermont call for significant glaze—up to 0.4–0.7 inches—posing a high risk of downed trees, power lines and impossible travel.
- Forecasters expect lake-effect snow to persist through the week in the Great Lakes, with localized totals that could reach several feet in favored belts as colder-than-normal air settles over much of the U.S.
- The Met Office has yellow snow and ice warnings for northern Scotland from Jan. 1–2 with 10–20 cm likely and up to 30 cm on higher ground, as UKHSA issues amber cold-health alerts for northern England; private charts showing heavier early-January UK snowfall remain unconfirmed.