A deep freeze enveloped most of the United States early Friday, while a massive winter storm brewing in the Midwest left two-thirds of the country under extreme weather alerts, confounding Christmas travel plans for millions.
Heading into the holiday weekend, the looming storm was forecast to develop into a “bomb cyclone”, unleashing heavy, blinding snow from the northern Plains and Great Lakes region to the upper Mississippi Valley and western New York state and extending north into Canada.
