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 Maine, where forecasters predicted up to 2 feet of snow and warned of avalanches.
The fallout was bleak: Flights canceled by the hundreds, extensive power failures and stern warnings to stay off the roads in cities like Chicago, where downtown was conspicuously quiet Saturday morning as plows tried to keep up with the growing piles of snow.
“You want to hit it hard while it’s hitting you hard,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago said Friday night as the storm approached his city.
Though the snowstorm was not exactly surprising — it is January, after all — its impact proved frightening. In Omaha, Nebraska, the airport closed for a time Friday after a Southwest Airlines plane slid off the runway after landing.
In Kansas, the state Department of Transportation said one its drivers died Saturday morning in a crash south of Kansas City.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family members and the co-workers of our driver,” Julie Lorenz, the interim transportation secretary in Kansas, said in a statement. “KDOT is one big family, and we know there are many people impacted by this.”
By Saturday morning, more than 8 inches of snow had fallen in Libertyville, Illinois, northwest of Chicago, and more than 3 inches in Des Moines, Iowa. A popular outlet mall in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, south of Milwaukee, announced it was closing for the day because of the snowfall. Nearly 300 flights had been canceled at Chicago’s two airports, according to FlightAware.
The storm’s impact was expected to worsen as it moved toward the East Coast on Saturday night. New York City was expected to get up to 3 inches of snow, with multiples of that forecast for upstate areas. Parts of Massachusetts could see up to 1 foot of snow, the National Weather Service warned. And dozens of flights had already been canceled at airports in New York City and Boston.
“If there is ever a weekend to stay in and binge-watch something, this may be it,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, who declared a state of emergency starting at noon Saturday.
Some people were able to find a silver lining amid the storm.
As Jennifer Hartwell was in midflight from Austin, Texas, to Detroit on Friday evening, she saw that her connecting flight to Indianapolis had been delayed to 6 a.m. Saturday. She texted her husband from the plane to book a rental car, and then asked a flight attendant to see if there were other passengers who wanted to take the four-hour road trip with her.
Three other passengers took her up. One of them had been racing to get home because of a death in the family, and would have missed a memorial service if she had waited for the 6 a.m. flight, said Hartwell, a trauma surgeon.
When they arrived in Indianapolis in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the father of the woman going to the memorial service embraced Hartwell.
“Thank you very much for getting my daughter to me,” he said through tears.
“If you step back,” Hartwell, 41, said, “you can make a connection with people that is meaningful and make the most out of the situation.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.