The storm, which complicated travel and busted plans for the three-day weekend across much of the country, caused problems from Kansas, where the governor declared an emergency, to New England, where forecasters predicted up to 2 feet of snow and warned of avalanches.
Flights were canceled by the thousands and officials gave warnings to stay off the roads.
By late Saturday afternoon, the worst of the storm was crossing the Appalachian Mountains and advancing toward the East Coast, where the brunt of the snowfall was expected overnight Saturday and into Sunday.
Areas to the south and closer to the coast were expected to get a wintry cocktail of snow, sleet, rain and ice, followed by plummeting temperatures.
“It’s a complicated storm,” said Rich Otto, a National Weather Service meteorologist, who said the “kitchen sink” of mixed precipitation was caused by a combination of cold air moving down from Canada and low pressure coming in from the south.
Otto said he expected the worst to move past New York City, where only 2 or 3 inches were forecast, by Sunday morning. In New England, the storm was expected to pass by Sunday night.
The snowstorm’s impact has proved frightening, especially on transportation.
A United Airlines plane slid off a concrete surface at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on Saturday, while the plane was turning off a runway. Airline officials said no injuries were reported.
The night before, at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska, a Southwest Airlines plane slid off the runway after landing.
Road conditions were also nasty. Two people died in Kohler, Wisconsin, on Friday night after a car they were riding in slid off a slick, snow-covered interstate and struck a tree, local police said. In Kansas, the state Department of Transportation said one of its drivers died Saturday morning in a crash south of Kansas City.
More than 2,000 flights were canceled across the country Saturday, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware, more than a quarter of those in Chicago.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.