A winter storm expected to arrive Friday is forecast to bring long-lasting subzero cold, heavy snow and damaging ice across much of the United States, meteorologists said. The impacts are expected to extend from New Mexico to New England and across the Deep South, with many areas facing both frigid temperatures and snow or ice.
Forecasts cited by the Associated Press said the eastern two-thirds of the country are threatened with a winter blast that could rival the damage of a major hurricane. Meteorologists also warned that the cold is likely to persist through the rest of January and into early February, meaning snow and ice that accumulates will take a long time to melt.
The National Weather Service said about 230 million people face temperatures of 20 degrees (minus 7 C) or colder, while around 150 million are likely to be hit by snow and ice. Meteorologists said the storm pattern is expected to affect those regions in waves, raising the risk of dangerous travel conditions and damage from freezing precipitation.
Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist and former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, warned that some people may be underestimating the severity. “I think people are underestimating just how bad it’s going to be,” Maue said.
Maue attributed the setup to a stretched polar vortex, describing an atmospheric pattern locked into a warm Arctic and a cold continent. “The atmosphere is aligned perfectly that the pattern is locked into this warm Arctic, cold continent,” Maue said. He added that “it’s not just here for us in North America,” and said, “The whole hemisphere has gone into the deep freeze.”
Meteorologists said the polar vortex is being elongated by a wave in the upper atmosphere that can be traced back to a relatively ice-free part of the Arctic and snow-buried Siberia. As the cold air moves south across the United States, it is expected to encounter moisture from off California and the Gulf of Mexico, setting up the combination of crippling ice and snow.
Judah Cohen, a winter weather expert and an MIT research scientist, said the conditions for a stretched polar vortex were developing as far back as October 2025, as changes in the Arctic and low sea ice helped set up the pattern. Cohen said heavy Siberian snowfall added to the odds of a stretching, saying it “kind of loaded the dice a bit’’ for a stretching of the polar vortex.
Cohen co-authored a July 2025 study that found more stretched polar vortex events linked to severe winter weather bursts in the central and eastern U.S. over the past decade. He said dramatically low sea ice in the Barents and Kara seas helps set up waves that contribute to U.S. cold bursts, and he added that a warmer Arctic is causing sea ice in that region to shrink faster than in other places. He pointed to Arctic sea ice being at a record low extent for this time of year, as reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Maue said the center of the stretched polar vortex will be somewhere above Duluth, Minnesota, by Friday morning, ushering in “long-lasting brutal cold.” He said temperatures in the North and Midwest could reach as low as minus 25 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 32 to minus 34 C), and he said the average low temperature for the Lower 48 states would be around 11 or 12 degrees (minus 12 to minus 11 C) on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. He also said two Great Lakes—Erie and Ontario—may freeze up, which could reduce lake-effect snow.
Separately, National Weather Service meteorologist Zack Taylor said most areas east of the Rockies will be impacted by bitter cold, snow or ice. He said treacherous freezing rain could stretch from the southern plains through the mid-South and into the Carolinas, warning of the potential for ice buildup that can harm infrastructure.
“We’re looking at the potential for impactful ice accumulation,” Taylor said, adding that the kind of ice that forms could cause significant or widespread power outages or potentially significant tree damage. He said that if areas do not get ice, they could see “another significant swath of heavy snow,” and he said it was too early to predict how many inches will fall. Taylor said “significant snowfall accumulations” could hit the Ozarks region, Tennessee and Ohio valleys, the central Appalachians, and then the mid-Atlantic and perhaps portions of the northeast.
Maue said that in the mid-Atlantic around the nation’s capital, there is a possibility that “you can get two blizzards on top of each other in the next 14 days.”