On a day when millions of Americans were expected to be traveling for the winter holidays, a massive cold weather system marched across most of the contiguous United States, bringing record-breaking cold, gusty winds and dangerous precipitation to states from Montana to Alabama.
The National Weather Service estimated that much of the nation's 330 million residents were under some sort of winter weather alert on Thursday — a who's who of winter maladies from blizzards, snow squalls and ice storms to high winds, wind chill and hard freezes.
