People in two states took shelter amid wailing warning sirens Sunday as tornadoes touched down in Kansas and Oklahoma as part of an extreme weather system plowing through the nation's midsection.

KFOR via AFP - Getty Images

Damaged structures after a tornado ripped through Wellston, Okla.

The system, which stretched from North Texas to Minnesota, also heaved hail -- dime- to softball-sized -- as well as heavy rainfall. 

Near Oklahoma City, a half-mile-wide tornado was reported, prompting an an unusually blunt alert from the Weather Service: "You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter," the advisory said. 

Around Shawnee, Okla., three large tractor-trailer rigs flipped over, one that had apparently been blown off a highway overpass, NBC station KFOR TV in Oklahoma City reported. 

Across central Oklahoma, where multiple twisters were seen, homes were blown apart and off their foundations with some of the worst damage seen in the Twin Lakes area just outside Wellston, according to KFOR. Power lines were downed and trees uprooted.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency in 16 counties.

St. Anthony Shawnee Hospital in Shawnee, Okla., treated 11 patients, hospital information officer Carla Tollett said. One victim was in critical condition, she said; the remaining 10 were to be treated for minor injuries and released.

Oklahoma's Department of Emergency Management confirmed four injuries in Lincoln County, but no fatalities. Officials were still surveying damage in many areas. Damaged buildings were confirmed in Edmond, Norman, Lincoln County and Pottawatomie County, which declared a state of emergency. 

Residents in downtown Wichita, Kan., were told to seek shelter Sunday afternoon after a tornado was confirmed on the ground – with its presence cloaked by thick thunder clouds and heavy rain.

The National Weather Service in Wichita warned of a large and “extremely dangerous and potentially deadly” tornado late Sunday.  Weather spotters confirmed the tornado 7 miles northwest of Haysville and moving northeast at 30 mph, the Weather Service said.

The tornado later passed south of the city in Sedgwick County in southern Kansas, but rain and thunderstorms continued to batter the area, NBC station KSN-TV in Wichita reported.

Travis Heying / MCT via Zuma Press

A tornado touches down southwest of Wichita near the town of Viola on Sunday.

The warning, which covered downtown Wichita as well as the surrounding area that includes Haysville, was lifted in early evening, KSN reported.

Power lines were down and at least three homes were damaged near Wichita, one with its roof blown off, KSN reported. Authorities said there were no injuries to report.

Other tornadoes were confirmed near Udall and Emporia, and danger remained in many parts of southcentral Kansas with residents told to seek refuge in storm shelters.

At least one massive tornado was confirmed on the ground near Oklahoma City, KFOR reported. The Weather Service reported that that twister was seen by spotters near Luther and was moving east at 30 mph.

The Lincoln County sheriff's office reported damage from three tornadoes that touched down, but the extent of the damage was not immediately known.

The Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., is forecasting tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds over parts of the central Plains into the week.

Low pressure in the Plains states will keep things "very unsettled and stormy" as the week goes on, The Weather Channel reported.

On Monday, the severe storms threat moves down to North Texas and Oklahoma, through northwest Arkansas, southeast Kansas and Missouri into parts of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes, according to the Weather Channel. Large hail and damaging winds are possible.

By Tuesday the large system is expected to be moving slowly to the east, from eastern Texas to the southern Great Lakes.

The storms are being generated by a dip in the jet stream combined with moisture moving north from the Gulf of Mexico, Kim Cunningham of The Weather Channel reported on NBC Nightly News.

The danger follows a series of tornadoes that struck northern Texas on Wednesday night, leaving six people dead and dozens injured. One of the twisters was preliminarily classified EF-4 by the National Weather Service, meaning it could have had winds up to 200 miles per hour.

Overall, tornadic activity has been slow this May, typically a bad month for twisters, said the Weather Channel’s Tom Moore.

Reuters contributed to this report.

A winter storm dumped more than a foot of snow on parts of Colorado on Saturday, causing cancellation of hundreds of flights at Denver International Airport, and damaging hail fell in Texas as a huge storm system swept across the central U.S.

The National Weather Service reported snow accumulations up to 14 inches in Colorado. At 5 p.m. MT, it said the storm was pushing out of the state but warned that blizzard conditions would be possible with strong winds until nearly midnight.

Read more from weather.com

As of 8 p.m. ET, nearly 500 flights in and out of Denver had been canceled, according to the flight tracking site flightaware.com.

Travel conditions “will be poor” on stretches of I-70, I-80 and I-25, weather.com reported. 

Two children from Irving, Texas, were killed in a car crash on a snowy highway east of Gunnison, Colo., NBCDFW.com reported.

The bad weather caused postponement of a Major League Soccer game: The Colorado Rapids said their game against the Philadelphia Union was pushed to Sunday. 

Blizzard conditions were possible in western Nebraska, southeast Wyoming, northwest Kansas and northeast Colorado, weather.com added.

The Weather Service said that moderate to heavy snow was likely for parts of the upper Midwest by Monday.

Severe weather swept across central Texas on Saturday night, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said in its Twitter feed. The roof of a grocery store in Hamilton, southwest of Fort Worth, was blown into a parking lot as winds up to 60 mph blew through the region, the weather service said.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that a weather service meteorologist said baseball-size hail struck near Decatur, northwest of the Dallas area, and smaller hail struck elsewhere in the region.

The latest storm comes after New England was hit by up to two feet of snow.

That storm, which moved out to sea Friday afternoon, also brought high winds that battered Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Long Island, the Weather Channel reported.

Three seaside houses on Massachusetts' Plum Island, about 40 miles north of Boston, had to be demolished after waves undermined them, NBC Nightly News reported. 

“We also have now four more that are severely structurally compromised and a total of 12 houses posted with no occupancy,” building inspector Sam Joslin told NBC Nightly News.

The owner of one of the houses lamented his loss.

“I’ve owned the house for a long, long time,” homeowner Stephen Bandoian told WHDH in a phone interview from Florida. “It was a great home, it was a great place, and now it’s gone.”

NBC News' Matt DeLuca and Gil Aegerter contributed to this report.

Brennan Linsley / AP

A man struggles to walk as blizzard conditions near the U.S. Air Force Academy, in southern Colorado on Saturday.

Related

 Snowstorm misses Washington, pounds areas west of nation's capital

'Wave after wave of snow' to hit New England hard, forecasters warn

This story was originally published on Sat Mar 9, 2013 7:00 AM EST

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET: Winter storm warnings were issued Saturday for parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania in the East and Colorado and New Mexico in the West.

The National Weather Service warned of snow-covered roads with 1 to 3 inches of snow expected to fall in affected areas in the East and locally higher amounts.

In some mountainous areas of Colorado, the NWS said it expected heavy, blowing snow with total accumulations of 10 to 20 inches.

Read more at weather.com

Some 8 to 12 inches of snow were expected to hit the northern mountains of New Mexico, the weather service said.

The Weather Channel said the last week's cold air invasion set the stage for this latest winter storm: "As an upper disturbance ejects out of the southwestern states, it will run into southerly winds on the backside of a high-pressure system centered over the Eastern Seaboard." 

Winter storm watches were also issued for parts of Illinois, including Chicago, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.

The weather service forecasts freezing rain will develop in that area, from central Iowa to southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois and southern Michigan on Saturday night or Sunday. Travel conditions could be hazardous this weekend, NWS warned.

“Further north into Minnesota and Wisconsin, a couple inches of snow are possible before changing over to freezing rain and then rain,” said meteorologist Michael Palmer of The Weather Channel. Palmer said rain, sleet and snow could also hit the Plains and Midwest over the weekend.

Palmer warned there was the potential for a up to 0.5 inch of ice accumulation for Omaha, Des Moines, St. Louis and Chicago before rain moved in.

“The icy mixture will affect Detroit, Pittsburgh and Buffalo going into Monday,” he said.

“The band of moisture will continue to shift northeastward through the Great Lakes Sunday night and Monday with a variety of wintry weather,” he added. “Rain breaks out in Oklahoma and Kansas late Saturday and spreads northward into the colder surface air Sunday for an icy mixture” for parts of Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois.

Palmer warned of “significant travel issues with very slick roadways” and also said some affected areas could see power outages Saturday night through Sunday.

However, he said “a surge of warmer air" would arrive in the Plains and Midwest by late Monday with most areas seeing the ice and snow melt.

NBC staff writer Isolde Raftery contributed to this report.

Matt Rourke / AP

A runner crosses a street during a winter snow storm, Friday, in Philadelphia.

Kevin Murphy / Reuters

A sprinkler is in use near Dodge City, Kans., on Nov. 26.

The drought that crippled many communities across the nation last year shows little sign of retreating, and the threat of persistent water scarcity is spurring efforts to preserve every drop.

As the drought of 2012 creeps into 2013, experts say the slow-spreading catastrophe presents near-term problems for a key U.S. agricultural region and potential long-term challenges for millions of Americans.

"Everyone is wondering whether this dry weather is the new norm ... or an anomaly that will soon pass," said Barney Austin, director of hydraulic services for INTERA Inc, an Austin, Texas-based geoscience and engineering consulting firm. "We all hope for the latter, but it's hard to tell."

The signs of distress and the search for answers are most prevalent in the Plains, where historic drought blankets much of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and parts of Texas.

This month the small Oklahoma farming town of Wapanucka lost water completely when the spring-fed wells the community relies on ran dry. Officials closed the town's school and residents had to do without tap water until the town could run a line to a neighboring water district.

In Texas, state lawmakers are pushing for a $2 billion fund to finance water infrastructure projects as numerous communities face their own shortages. But it won't be soon enough to help rice farmers, who were told this month that there is not likely to be enough water to irrigate their fields this spring.

Meanwhile, in the big wheat-growing state of Kansas, penalties for exceeding water use limits for irrigation were doubled this month and Gov. Sam Brownback has launched a task force to come up with strategies to counter statewide shortages.

"It's going to be dry again this year," said Lane Letourneau, water appropriations manager for the Kansas Agriculture Department. "We consider this a really big deal."

Slideshow: America's farmland baking in drought

Drought conditions plague much of the United States after a summer of scorching temperatures and a lack of rain. The dryness is affecting America's farmland, threatening crops like soybean and corn.

Launch slideshow

Searching for solutions
Water use is already tightly curtailed in many states. Years of low rainfall and high heat - last year was the hottest on record for the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - have diminished surface waters even as population and water demand expand.

As well, agricultural and oil and gas interests are pumping the precious commodity from underground aquifers at a pace that often cannot be matched by natural replenishment.

"Water has been viewed as a basic commodity, a basic right," said Les Lampe, a water expert with consultancy Black & Veatch. "You turn on the tap and water comes out and you don't pay very much for it. That has to change."

Farmers are feeling the pain of water shortages most acutely. After multibillion-dollar crop and livestock losses tied to last year's drought, they fear more losses are coming.

Texas rice growers who depend on the lower Colorado River valley for survival are eyeing the fluctuating levels of two key lakes used for irrigation when river levels are too low.

State officials said this month that without enough rain by spring, rice farmers could be completely cut off from irrigation, jeopardizing about 2 percent of the U.S. crop and about $1 billion for the Texas economy.

"We've got a shortage of water," said Ronald Gertson, a rice grower and chairman of the Colorado Water Issues Committee. "People are going to be both hungry and thirsty before they wake up to this problem."

Forecasts show drier-than-normal weather likely prevailing in the Plains and western Midwest for the next few months at least. But even normal rainfall levels would not be enough to fully recharge resources.

Three to five times more rain than normal is needed in key corn-growing areas that include Nebraska and Kansas, for instance, to ease soil dryness after last summer's drought, according to Don Keeney, an agricultural meteorologist with Cropcast weather service.

Roughly 60.26 percent of the contiguous United States was in at least moderate drought as of January 8, according to a "Drought Monitor" report issued by a group of federal and state climatology experts. Severe drought still blanketed 86.20 percent of the High Plains.

"This drought certainly has gotten people's attention," said Joe Straus, speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. "Regardless of whether it starts raining now or not, long-term water planning is essential. We need to be responsible."

For some, it's already an emergency. Persistent dry conditions in north-central Oklahoma led officials in Payne County to declare a state of emergency this month as the reservoir providing water to nearly 16,000 residents in seven counties fell to record low levels.

The approximately 500 residents of Wapanucka are talking of higher rates to fund a permanent pipeline to a new water source. But running out of water has shown how harsh doing without water can be, said Julie Wallis, Wapanucka's city water clerk.

"We are not going to be the only ones who this happens to," said Wallis. "It's coming."

From the archives, Aug. 2012: Drought: the 'new normal'?

Staff / Reuters

A sprinkler is used near Dodge City, Kansas, in this Nov. 26 photo. Residents of the Great Plains over the last year or so have experienced storms reminiscent of the 1930s Dust Bowl. Experts say the new storms have been brought on by a combination of historic drought, a dwindling Ogallala Aquifer underground water supply, climate change and government farm programs.

LIBERAL, Kan. - Real estate agent Mark Faulkner recalls a day in early November when he was putting up a sign near Ulysses, Kansas, in 60-miles-per-hour winds that blew up blinding dust clouds. 

"There were places you could not see, it was blowing so hard," Faulkner said. 

Residents of the Great Plains over the last year or so have experienced storms reminiscent of the 1930s Dust Bowl. Experts say the new storms have been brought on by a combination of historic drought, a dwindling Ogallala Aquifer underground water supply, climate change and government farm programs. 

Nearly 62 percent of the United States was gripped by drought, as of Dec. 25, and "exceptional" drought enveloped parts of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. 

There is no relief in sight for the Great Plains at least through the winter, according to Drought Monitor forecasts, which could portend more dust clouds. 

A wave of dust storms during the 1930s crippled agriculture over a vast area of the Great Plains and led to an exodus of people, many to California, dramatized in John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath." 

Drought worsens in High Plains; winter outlook grim

While few people believe it could get that bad again, the new storms have some experts worried that similar conditions -- if not the catastrophic environmental disaster of the 1930s -- are returning to parts of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado. 

"I hope we don't talk ourselves into complacency with easy assumptions that a Dust Bowl could never happen again," said Craig Cox, agriculture director for the Environmental Working Group, a national conservation group that supports converting more tilled soil to grassland. "Instead, we should do what it takes to make sure it doesn't happen again." 

Handout / Reuters

Webcam views show South Loop 289 before and during a dust storm in Lubbock, Texas, in these National Weather Service handout images dated December 19.

Satellite images on Dec. 19 showed a dust storm stretching over an area of 150 miles from extreme southwestern Oklahoma across the Panhandle of Texas around Lubbock to extreme eastern New Mexico, said Jody James, National Weather Service meteorologist in Lubbock. Visibility was reduced to half a mile in places, stoked by high winds, he said. At least one person was killed and more than a dozen injured in car crashes. 

"I definitely think these dust storms will become more common until we get more measurable precipitation," James said. 

'Dirty 30s' 
The Great Plains is a flat, semi-arid, area with few trees, where vast herds of buffalo once thrived on native grasses. Settlers plowed up most of the grassland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to create the wheat-growing breadbasket of the United States, encouraged by high commodity prices and free "homestead" land from the government. 

The era known as the "Dirty 30s" -- chronicled by Ken Burns in a Public Broadcasting Service documentary that aired in November -- as when a 1930s drought gripped the Great Plains and winds carried away exposed soil in massive dust clouds. 

More stories in Environment

Bill Fitzgerald, 87, a farmer near Sublette, Kansas, remembers "Black Sunday" on April 14, 1935, when a clear, sunny day in southwest Kansas turned black as night by mid afternoon because of a massive cloud of dust that swept from Nebraska to the Texas panhandle. 

"My older brother and I were in my dad's 1927 or '28 Chevy truck a mile north and a mile west of the house and we saw it rolling in," Fitzgerald said. "It was about 10 p.m. when it cleared enough for us to go home." 

Farming practices have vastly improved since the 1930s. Farmers now leave plant remnants on the top of the soil and less soil is exposed, to preserve moisture and prevent erosion. 

Irrigation beginning in the 1940s from the Ogallala aquifer, a huge network of water under the Great Plains, also made land less vulnerable to dust storms. 

Drying 
But the Ogallala aquifer is drying up after years of drawing out more water than was replenished. 

Many farmers have had to drill deeper wells to find water. Others are giving up on irrigation altogether, which means they can no longer grow crops of high-yielding and lucrative corn. They will instead grow wheat, cotton or grain sorghum on dry land, which depends completely on natural precipitation in an area that typically gets 20 inches of rain a year or less. 

Near Sublette, Kansas, farmer Gail Wright said he would probably give up irrigating two square miles of his land and would plant wheat and grain sorghum instead of corn because of the diminishing aquifer. Drilling deeper wells would cost $120,000 each, Wright said. 

Slideshow: America's farmland baking in drought

/

Drought conditions plague much of the United States after a summer of scorching temperatures and a lack of rain. The dryness is affecting America's farmland, threatening crops like soybean and corn.

Launch slideshow

"When we drilled those wells in the 1960s and 70s, we were doing 1,500 or 1,600 gallons per minute," said Wright. "Now, they are down to anywhere from 400 to 600 gallons per minute. We probably pumped out 200 feet of water." 

Another farmer in Sublette, 79-year-old Lawrence Withers, whose family farms land his grandfather settled in 1887, is resigned to a future without irrigation. 

"We have pumped 170 feet off the aquifer, that's gone. There's just a little tick of water at the bottom," he said. 

The Ogallala supplies water to 176,000 square miles of land in parts of eight states from the Texas panhandle to southern South Dakota. That amounts to about 27 percent of all irrigated land in the nation, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. 

60 percent of lower 48 states now in drought

The volume of water in the aquifer stood at about 2.9 billion acre feet in 2009, a decline of about 9 percent since 1950, according to the Geological Survey. About two-and-a-half times as much water was drawn out in the 14 years ended 2009 as during the prior 15-year period, data shows. 

The water may run out in 25 years or less in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and southwest Kansas, although in other areas it has 50 to 200 years left, according to the Geological Survey. 

Rationing has been imposed on irrigation in the region but it may be too little too late. 

"It's a situation where across the Plains the demand far exceeds the annual recharge," said Mark Rude, executive director of the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District. 

Record drought 
The worst drought in decades has exacerbated the situation. The semi-arid area around Lubbock, which typically gets about 19 inches of rain a year, received less than 6 inches in 2011, the lowest ever recorded. This year was better but still far below normal at 12.5 inches, meteorologist James said. 

Climate change is also having an impact on the region, said atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, co-director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. 

Grain prices soar as drought impact deepens

"It is definitely hotter in the summer and drier in the summer because of climate change," she said. 

The average annual temperature in Lubbock has increased by one full degree over the last decade, according to National Weather Service data, and the average amount of rainfall has fallen during summer months by about .50 inch over the decade. 

Some say government policies are making things worse. 

Federal government subsidized crop insurance pays farmers whether they produce a crop or not, encouraging farmers to plant even in a drought year. 

Another subsidized U.S. government program that pays farmers to take sensitive marginal land out of crop production and put it into grassland is gradually shrinking. 

In a possible case of history repeating itself, high commodity prices are encouraging farmers to break up the land and plant crops when the 10-year conservation contracts with the government expire, said environmentalist Cox. This is similar to what happened in the 1920s when vast areas of grassland were plowed up. 

The government also has imposed restrictions on how much land can go into conservation reserves to save money at a time of massive U.S. budget deficits, he said. 

The amount of land in conservation reserves has declined by more than 2.3 million acres over the last five years in five states of the Great Plains -- Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data. 

If most of that land is plowed up for crops it could lead to more dust storms in the future. 

"I think you are probably going to see increased erosion if that happens," said Richard Zartman, Chairman of the Plant and Soil Science Department at Texas Tech, adding that it was unlikely to get as bad as the Dust Bowl days. 

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Parts of South Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota were digging out Monday morning as the season’s worst winter storm passed through the region.

The wintry storm unleashed high winds, frigid air and heavy snowfall across the Upper Midwest on Sunday, with parts of Minnesota getting more than a foot of snow, Weather.com reported.  Bone-chilling winter temperatures were forecast to spread into much of the country in the early part of the week.

The Minnesota State Patrol reported more than 600 crashes by Monday morning, and at least 1,140 spinouts, according to Lt. Eric Roeske, and driving conditions remained hazardous. One person was killed in a crash involving a semi near Red Wing and injuries were reported in 63 other accidents, the patrol said.

Conditions were so dangerous that the Minnesota Department of Transportation closed some of the state’s highways Sunday night due to the blizzard conditions, KARE11.com, a local NBC affiliate, reported.

"That wind and snow is making a combination that is a lethal one," said meteorologist Nick Walker on Weather.com.

The heaviest snowfall was reported in Sacred Heart, Minn., with more than 17.3 inches.  The seven inches of snow that fell on the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Sunday was already more than on any day last season, Weather.com reported.  More than 100 flights in and out of the airport were canceled Sunday.

A record daily snowfall of 10.2 inches was set at Twin Cities, Minn., on Sunday. The old daily record of 7.4 inches was set in 1961.

Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images

Snow falls over Lambeau Field as fans gather ahead of a game on Sunday in Green Bay, Wis.

At Minneapolis’s Metrodome, officials cranked up the heat to make sure that the snow didn't bring down its inflatable roof. Nearly two years ago, a storm that dumped 17 inches of snow in 24 hours tore holes in the dome, and forced the Vikings football team to play the final two games of the season elsewhere. The repair project cost $22.7 million.

Single-digit and even below-freezing temperatures were gripping the region Monday morning. The cold front is set to spread as far south as Houston, Little Rock, Ark. and Memphis, Tenn., which were likely to see temperatures drop into the 40s and 50s.

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com

Forecasters expect the extreme winter weather to end toward the middle of the week, with the mercury returning to more normal December averages. Chicago meanwhile, has recently enjoyed warmer-than-usual weather and was on track to break the record for the longest stretch of snowless days on Monday, NBCChicago.com reported. 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Andy King / AP

Snow-covered trees are seen outside the Mall of America Field at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome before an NFL football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears on Sunday.

Updated at 10:11 p.m. ET: A potent winter storm pounded the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains on Sunday with heavy snow and strong winds, making traveling treacherous and prompting airlines to cancel scores of flights.

The heaviest snowfall was expected from eastern South Dakota through southern Minnesota. Forecasters said up to 16 inches was possible in the hardest-hit areas, including up to a foot in and around Minneapolis.

A record snowfall of 10.2 inches was set at Twin Cities, MN on Sunday. The old record of 7.4 inches was set in 1961. 

The snow, coupled with winds gusting as high as 40 mph, could produce whiteout conditions “making travel nearly impossible,” the National Weather Service said in a statement.

Minnesota State Police said more than 300 car crashes were reported from 9:30 p.m. Saturday to noon Sunday, none of them fatal.

And it wasn’t just the snow that was a threat. The weather service said temperatures were expected to plummet behind the system to well below zero over western Minnesota, with wind chill readings as low as 20 to 30 below.

“Travel will be very difficult and stranded motorists risk getting frostbite or hypothermia due to the frigid wind chill late this evening and tonight,” the weather service said.

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More than 150 flights at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport were canceled due to the storm, airport spokesman Pat Hogan told The Associated Press.

 Delta Air Lines said snow and icing conditions prompted it to cancel about 90 flights on Sunday.

The southern branch of the storm was expected to dump heavy snow in the Central to Southern Rockies, according to The Weather Channel’s Tom Niziol. “As the system continues south, snow will also spread southward across the mountains of New Mexico from Taos through Sante Fe where over a foot of snow is likely for this area,” he said.

Snow, strong winds and cold air were also expected to hit the Great Lakes region late Sunday night into Monday.

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Matt Volz / AP

A man walks his dog past a half-buried statue of a newspaper boy in Helena, Mont., on Friday. The first major winter storm of the year led to blizzard warnings parts of Montana and dumped more than a foot of snow in Helena.

Snow and wind across parts of the western U.S. could create blizzard conditions into the weekend, triggering a number of winter weather advisories across the West.

Meteorologists predict the winter storm, which The Weather Channel dubbed "Brutus," could be worst over northern Montana, where blizzard warnings persist through Saturday morning, according to Weather.com. The winter system comes just days after a nor'easter hit the Northeast, which was still digging out from Superstorm Sandy.

Moisture moving from the Pacific, cold air over the mountain ranges and wind are combining to create potential blizzard conditions, according to Weather.com.

"The clouds have really blossomed across parts of the northern Rockies and northern High Plains, and that’s the area of heavy snow that’s been setting up over the last 24 hours," said meteorologist Carl Parker on The Weather Channel.

Montana will likely see the brunt of this system. The storm already began affecting Bozeman, Mont., where up to 8 inches of snow could fall by Saturday night, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported.

As of early Friday, nearly 10 inches of snow had fallen in Great Falls, Mont., the Weather Channel reported.

"The snow is likely to stick around through Saturday morning with additional accumulation expected for eastern Montana and lighter flurries for Billings and areas west," said Brad Carl, a meteorologist for KULR-8, Billing's NBC News affiliate.

AP Photo/Weather Underground

This NOAA satellite image taken Friday at 11 a.m. ET shows a low pressure system over the Rocky Mountains, with snow and cloudy conditions from Montana to Utah.

The National Weather Service is forecasting temperatures to be 10 to 25 degrees below average in parts of the northern high Plains, while sleet and freezing rain is possible over parts of the Upper Midwest.

Wind gusts as high as 85 mph blew into Salt Lake City on Friday, where snow began to fall in the morning, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. The area is already seeing crashes and power outages caused by the weather. Through the weekend, mountain areas in Utah could see one to two feet of snow, the newspaper added.

At least 12 to 18 inches of snow is expected across the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado, according to The Weather Channel.

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