A deadly winter storm snarled holiday travel across the central United States Thursday as freezing rain and heavy snow caused traffic chaos and grounded hundreds of flights. At least 18 deaths on the roadways were attributed to the nasty storm which arrived on Wednesday bringing freezing rain and heavy snow and was not expected to clear before Saturday.
"There's just a humongous storm moving across the center of the country, basically from the Canadian border to Texas and spreading from west Colorado to Illinois," said National Weather Service (NWS) spokesman Pat Slattery.