Despite the official arrival of spring, a major winter storm was expected to dump more snow from Colorado to the Ohio Valley through Sunday, forecasters said, warning much of the U.S. would see unseasonably cold weather through the end of March.

Michael Palmer, of weather.com, said that the heaviest band of snow over the next 24 hours would move from eastern Colorado through northern Kansas and into Missouri.

He said Denver was expected to get 5 to 8 inches of snow, with some parts of the High Plains of Colorado and northwest Kansas getting a foot or more.

“Snow, locally heavy, rides eastward along I-70 to Kansas City and St. Louis through Saturday night and Sunday,” Palmer said.

“The heavier snow, potentially 6 to 12 inches plus, then pounds much of Indiana, northern Kentucky and Ohio Sunday into Sunday night,” he added.

Soccer game blizzard
A soccer game between the United States and Costa Rica went ahead Friday night despite the snowy weather. The World Cup 2014 qualifying game was won 1-0 by the U.S. with U.S. manager Jurgen Klinsmann describing it as "a real snow battle."

But Reuters reported the Costa Ricans were left fuming over the referee's decision to keep playing through a blizzard. Head coach Jorge Luis Pinto told the news agency that the game was an "embarrassment to football" and midfielder Cristian Bolanos was also irate. "It was robbery, a disgrace, I've never played a game in these conditions," the player said. 

Palmer said that “very cold air with freezing temps” was expected to last in the East through the end of March.

“The unseasonably cold March temperatures are locked in place across much of the country for the next week or so,” Palmer said.

“Most areas will be 10-30 degrees below average with freezing temps extending deep into the South at times,” he added. “The only areas escaping the chill will be parts of Florida and from the Rio Grand Valley into the Desert Southwest.”

Mark Leffingwell / Reuters

A soccer match between the U.S. and Costa Rica went ahead Friday despite blizzard conditions in Commerce City, Colorado.

“Many areas of the Upper Midwest are on track to have a top 5 or top 10 coldest March on record after the warmest March just last year.”

Palmer also said that the Mid-Atlantic could expected a “wintry mix changing to snow” late Sunday and into Monday.

“A more northerly track of the system may bring some accumulating snow as far north as New York City on Monday,” he added.

The Gulf Coast was also expected to see severe storms, generally south of I-20 in east Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida on Saturday into Sunday.

“Large hail and damaging winds are the primary threats, but isolated tornadoes are still possible,” Palmer said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

US fights through storm, downs Costa Rica

How a messy match unfolded, a 'real snow battle'

Prosecutor sees Punxsutawney Phil pushing daisies for forecast fraud

The Bismarck Tribune via AP

Snow-covered trees form a scenic canopy over Bismarck, N.D., on Monday, March 4, 2013, in the wake of a slow-moving winter storm that passed through the state.

A late-winter storm was expected to gum up travel Tuesday as it crept slowly across the Central and Midwest U.S. before heading east later in the week, forecasters said Monday.

The storm was expected to peter out by the time it hits New York and Boston later in the week, but not before it creates a mess for commuters from Upper Mississippi and Ohio River valleys eastward to the Atlantic Coast.

Significant snowfall will make travel dangerous Monday night and Tuesday in the Upper Midwest, especially around major cities like Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Chicago. The Weather Channel warned that major delays were likely Tuesday at O'Hare and Midway airports.

Chicago is expected to get its biggest snowfall of the season — as much as 10 inches by Tuesday evening. The National Weather Service said accumulation rates of one to two inches an hour beginning Tuesday morning would make "snow removal difficult and travel extremely dangerous."

"Consider only traveling if in an emergency," it said in issuing a winter storm warning for the city.

Unseasonably warm temperatures Monday melted some of the winter's snow in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul — just in time for a new blast of winter that could drop as much as 7 inches of new snow overnight and Tuesday.

"I'm tired of being ready for winter. I am ready for it be spring," Barbara Eckley of Minneapolis told NBC station KARE.

By Wednesday, significant accumulations were forecast for the Washington area. Major flight delays are possible at Washington-Dulles, Reagan National and possibly Baltimore-Washington International airports.

While the storm isn't yet expected to hit the Northeast hard — forecasters said they'd have a better picture later in the week — the travel delays could have a noticeable ripple effect Wednesday in Philadelphia, New York and Boston.

The system has meandered across the country since it formed off the West Coast last week. It was dropping heavy snow Monday on an area stretching from northeast Montana through parts of North Dakota and Minnesota and into eastern Iowa.

A foot of snow had already fallen in parts of eastern North Dakota by noon Monday, NBC station KVLY of Fargo reported. Snow-covered passing lanes and reduced visibility were expected to remain a problem into Tuesday.

At least 38 traffic accidents were reported in Black Hawk County in central Iowa by 6:30 a.m., NBC station KWWL of Waterloo reported. Six to 10 more inches are possible in the region by Tuesday morning.

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This story was originally published on Mon Mar 4, 2013 5:31 PM EST

DENVER -- A backcountry skier was killed and another critically injured in a weekend avalanche they apparently triggered on a northern Colorado mountain pass, a day after three other people died in snowslides across the country, authorities said on Sunday.

The two men in Colorado were cross-country skiing Saturday on the western side of Cameron Pass, about 135 miles northwest of Denver, when they were buried in the avalanche, said Kent Minor, manager of State Forest State Park.

"There were two sets of ski tracks going in, so the assumption is they caused the avalanche," Minor said, adding that the slab of snow and ice that broke loose was 300 to 400 yards long.

The two skiers were outfitted with avalanche-locator beacons, and rescuers on snowmobiles reached them late Saturday afternoon after battling through deep snow and steep, rugged terrain, he said.

The first skier they reached was found dead, and rescuers then dug out the second man, who had been buried for 90 minutes, Minor said. Neither victim has been identified.

Minor said it took rescuers on snowmobiles, snowshoes and snow sleds more than five hours to get the injured man to a spot where a helicopter could land and airlift him to the hospital, where he was listed in critical but stable condition.

Crews returned to the area on Sunday morning to retrieve the body of the dead skier, Minor said. A dog that accompanied the pair has not been located, he said.

Scott Toepfer, a forecaster with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, said Saturday's incident was the fourth avalanche-related death in Colorado this season and the 13th nationwide.

Toepfer said the Colorado fatality brought to four the number of U.S. avalanche deaths so far in March, including a snowmobiler in Utah, a skier in Wyoming and a climber in New Hampshire who were all killed in separate snowslides on Friday.

In a typical year, 25 people in the United States perish in avalanches, he said. 

High winds and heavy rains brought more misery to the Eastern Seaboard Thursday, a day after a squall line thundered across the South and produced widespread flooding, tornadoes and violent storms that leveled homes and killed at least two people.

The National Weather Service issued watches and warnings predicting damaging winds, flooding and perhaps even more tornadoes as the storm system pushed toward the Atlantic.

Major cities including Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York were lashed by gusts of up to 60 mph Thursday, strong enough to topple trees and bring down power lines. The accompanying storms could bring up to an inch of rain per hour and lead to flash flooding, the weather service said. 

Even stronger winds, gusting to 65 mph, were predicted for Boston and parts of New England.

Nearly 430,000 homes and businesses were without electricity following the storm Thursday, about half of them in Massachusetts, according to National Grid and Western Mass. The rest of the outages were spread throughout the Northeast and included nearly 74,000 customers in Connecticut, 74,000 in Rhode Island and 37,000 in New Jersey, according to local utility providers.

Traffic delays were also in effect due to the windy conditions. Some flights to Newark International Airport were delayed more than two and a half hours and flights going to LaGuardia Airport in New York were delayed a little more than an hour, according to the FAA.

On Wednesday, eight different states confirmed tornadoes: Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Mississippi and Indiana.

The hardest-hit area was Adairsville, Ga., where a tornado ripped through Interstate 75, overturning cars and destroying homes and businesses.

“The sky was swirling,” Theresa Chitwood, who owns the Adairsville Travel Plaza, told the Associated Press.

Anthony Raines, 51, was killed when a tree crashed down on his mobile home, crushing him in his bed, Bartow County Coroner Joel Guyton told the Associated Press. Nine other people were hospitalized for minor injuries, authorities said.

Another death reported from the storms was in Tennessee, where a tree fell Tuesday onto a storage shed a man had taken shelter in.

David Goldman / AP

Workers look for personal belongings after a tornado struck Adairsville, Ga., Wednesday.

The Adairsville Supermarket, a 55,000-square-foot staple in the town since 1958, was reduced to a massive pile of rubble, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.  Only a few people were inside at the time of destruction, but all of them managed to escape unscathed, the store’s owner Dilip Patel told the newspaper.

Across the street, a hotel was also a nearly-flattened pile of rubble and most of the roof was gone.

“It was like you just opened it up with a can opener,” Trish Cooper, a hotel guest, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You could just see everything.”

The storms were largely caused by a mass of cold air and high winds colliding with warm, wet air from the Gulf of Mexico that brought balmy temperatures to much of the East and Midwest.

As the cold air takes hold, a return to winter proper follows suit.

Winter storm warnings were in effect Thursday in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, while parts of the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest hunkered down under wind chills predicted to dip as low as 55 degrees below zero in North Dakota.

"Dangerous wind chills of 20-50 degrees below zero are possible for the Dakotas and Minnesota," Weather Channel meteorologist Kevin Roth said.

In more populous areas, including the Twin Cities, wind chills had potential to reach minus 40 degrees, the weather service said.

Those in the Upper Midwest who escape the worst of the wind chills still won’t have it easy. Forecasters warned of heavy lake-effect snows from Wisconsin to Western New York.

Skip Butler / The Daily Tribune News via AP

Emergency crews rescue Brenda Mulkey, injured at her home when a suspected tornado touched down in Adairsville, Ga. Wednesday.

Related:

• Tornado rips through Georgia city as storms wreak havoc
• Full coverage from weather.com

The Midwest’s record-breaking winter heat wave is starting to cool off, with temperatures expected to dip into the teens Thursday, capping a week of weather whiplash.

Temperatures in Chicago surged to the mid-60s Tuesday, nearly breaking the city’s all-time record for January. But then temperatures plummeted almost 30 degrees Wednesday, and weather forecasters expect a deeper drop into the mid-teens Thursday.

The frigid cold will be a rude awakening for Chicagoans who enjoyed Tuesday’s balmy climes.

“I’ve never skated when it’s 60 degrees out before, so this is a new one for me,” Kevin Price told the Chicago Tribune, dressed for spring-like weather in a T-shirt and jeans.

Tuesday's mid-afternoon high of 63 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport came close to January’s all-time record, 67 degrees, hit in 1950. But the freak heat beat a 99-year record for Jan. 29.

Meanwhile, temps in Washington, D.C. also rose to unseasonable heights, hitting the mid-70s, giving the nation’s capital a welcome reprieve from days of icy chill.

But in the Midwest and parts of the east, sunny conditions have dramatically dimmed. Green Bay, Wisconsin, swung from the 50s to six inches of snow Wednesday.

Related story: Tornado rips through Georgia city

A winter storm that socked the Midwest last week moved across the Northeast on Monday, bringing light snow, ice and rain to the region, forecasters said. 

The wintry mix hit from eastern Pennsylvania through southern New England, The Weather Channel reported. Major accumulations of snow were not anticipated.

Snowfall of up to 3 inches is possible from central and northern New York through central and northern New England.

The weather will change to sleet and freezing rain in southern New York, northeastern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey, and roads could be slick.

Morning sleet and freezing rain forecast to become afternoon rain in western Virginia, central and southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware.

Stan Honda / AFP - Getty Images

Snow falls lightly in Manhattan, N.Y., on Monday, January 28, 2013. Temperatures near freezing are making it tricky for commuters and pedestrians.

The mixture of freezing rain and sleet in the Northeast follows a weekend of disruption in the Midwest, with many flights in and out of Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Louis being grounded by icy runways on Sunday, according to Reuters.

Hundreds of churches across Iowa cancelled Sunday services as sidewalks were turned to sheets of ice by the storm that covered the region, Reuters said.

Meanwhile, a storm bringing rain to the southwest Monday was expected to move into the southern Plains and southern half of the Mississippi Valley on Tuesday.

Damaging wind gusts, hail and tornadoes are possible from eastern Oklahoma and northeast Texas to central and southern Illinois, western Kentucky, western Tennessee, northwest Mississippi and northern Louisiana Tuesday.

In the northern Plains, as many as 4 to 6 inches of precipitation was expected from eastern North Dakota to northern Minnesota Monday afternoon through Tuesday.

Elsewhere, heavy mountain snows and strong winds were forecast in mountain areas across the West that will result in significant drifting snow, which has prompted an avalanche watch for a portion of the Colorado Rockies.