BOSTON -- New Englanders were preparing for another messy day of snow as they welcomed spring's unseasonable arrival.

Forecasts called for as much as 16 inches of snow in parts of northern New England through Wednesday morning, bringing slippery road conditions. Snow was expected to taper off in other locations.

"It's the real deal — the heavy, wet snow," said National Weather Service forecaster John Cannon in Gray, Maine. "Travel will be treacherous into the early morning hours."

Snow and sleet blasted the Northeast on Tuesday, where some places received over a foot of snow. Classes were canceled in some districts in Massachusetts, Connecticut and upstate New York, adding a few more snow days to the calendar.

Snow also socked other parts of the northern U.S., with as much as 2 feet forecast in parts of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Icy roads caused numerous auto accidents. In Marlborough, Mass., the Harlem Globetrotters' bus collided with a car on Interstate 290, but no one was hurt and the bus was able to drive away, the state police said. No citations were issued.

There was nothing unusual about a snowstorm in the Northeast this late in the season, when it can still get plenty cold.

"They don't happen all the time, but it's not, you know, unheard of," said Alan Dunham, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass.

Nina Walker, of Woburn in suburban Boston, said she had to shovel about 8 inches of snow off her driveway before driving to Boston's South Station to take a train to New York. As a lifelong New Englander, she takes the snow in stride, but draws the line at storms after March 31.

"Once I hear the word 'April,' I am really offended when I hear the word 'snow,'" she said. "So this is OK today, but a couple of weeks from now, it had better not happen."

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Severe storms, large hail cause extensive damage in South

This story was originally published on Wed Mar 20, 2013 5:13 AM EDT

March may go out like a lamb, but it promises to be a lion for the next few days for a huge strip of the country.

A late-season winter storm is predicted to bring snow, ice and even blizzard conditions from the Northern Plains to the New England coast and as far south as the nation's capital.

Wednesday is the first day of spring, but try telling that to people in the affected areas. 

The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for large parts of the Dakotas and Minnesota as winds gusted at 50 mph and snow started piling up late Sunday and early Monday.

Traffic could be snarled in urban centers, especially the Twin Cities, and things might not be much better in Chicago, where just a bit of snow is forecast but freezing rain threatens to bedevil Monday morning commuters.

The wintry mess will spread across the northern Great Lakes region and into the Northeast later Monday and into Tuesday, according to Weather.com.

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Most of Wisconsin is under a winter weather advisory, while lake-effect snows are expected in western Michigan. Across the southern Great Lakes, including Cleveland and much of northern Ohio, as well as parts of western Pennsylvania, snow is expected to be followed by freezing rain throughout much of Monday, potentially causing traffic tie-ups throughout the region, according to NBCChicago.com said.

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Much of the same is possible as far south as Washington, D.C. Its far western, northern and southern suburbs in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia were under winter storm warnings and advisories through Monday evening.

Much of the heavily populated Northeast Corridor looks to escape the worst of the snow, but freezing rain and some snow could complicate travel in New York, NBCNewYork.com warned.

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Boston lies just to the east of the weather service winter storm warning area, but much of New England doesn't look likely to be spared the storm.

Most of northern New England was under winter storm warning into Tuesday -- and through Wednesday for much of Maine -- with forecasters predicting up to 14 inches of snow and winds gusting at 25 to 30 mph from Western New York to the Maine coast.

This story was originally published on Mon Mar 18, 2013 5:32 AM EDT

Sydney Brink / Sedalia Democrat via AP

Tedd Hendrix, of Sedalia, Mo., frees a line of cable from downed branches Tuesday as he works to tie the line off so that it is elevated and out of the road. A snow storm, the second in less than a week, dumped about a foot of snow in Sedalia, knocking out power around the town and collapsing the roofs of several buildings.

A winter storm coated a swath of the country from Missouri to Maine with snow Wednesday, and forecasters warned of difficult travel.

About 100 flights into and out of Chicago’s O’Hare airport were canceled by midday, according to FlightAware.com, on top of more than 500 the day before.

Chicago had almost 5 inches of snow Tuesday, bringing its total for February to 14.9 inches and ranking it among the 20 snowiest months on record, according to NBCChicago.com.

As the storm moves east, it is expected to dump 6 to 10 inches of snow Wednesday and Thursday from the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania through the Adirondacks of upstate New York and into interior New England.

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It is the same storm system that blasted the Rockies and the Great Plains earlier this week, packing hurricane-force wind gusts and shutting down travel in Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.

“It has a couple of jabs yet, especially for New England,” said Weather Channel meteorologist Tom Niziol.

In the Midwest, the National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings for Wednesday — some stretching into Thursday — for parts of Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan. Heavily populated areas, including Milwaukee, suburban Chicago, northern suburbs of Detroit and Des Moines, Iowa, were also under warnings.

In the Northeast, the storm was expected to bring snow and ice to New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and parts of Maine through Thursday afternoon.

New York and other major cities such as Boston were forecast to mostly escape the heavy weather. But commuters in New York slogged through heavy wind and rain to get to work Wednesday. Upstate New York and northern parts of New England were expected to see further snow through Wednesday into the evening.

“It’s going to linger for a long time over portions of the Northeast,” meteorologist Brian Korty told Reuters.

The storm's biggest impact has been in Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, though. In Texas, winds gusted to 84 mph near El Paso, according to Weather.com, which reported 7-foot snow drifts in Silverton, south of Amarillo.

The 19 inches of snow in Amarillo on Monday set a 120-year record, meteorologist Krissy Scotten told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth. The city in the Texas Panhandle usually sees an average of just under 18 inches for the entire winter, Scotten said.

To the east, parts of Missouri got more than a foot of snow, and Kansas City had 8 inches with more falling Wednesday morning.

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Two dead as wind-whipped storm pounds Great Plains

This story was originally published on Wed Feb 27, 2013 5:01 AM EST

Craig Ruttle / AP

Cars are buried by snow near Hamden, Conn., Sunday, in the aftermath of the winter storm that hammered New England.

Updated at 8:42 a.m. ET: The Northeast began stirring back to life Monday after being buried under a record-setting winter storm that left at least 12 people dead, buried cars and effectively closed some of the nation’s busiest airports for large parts of the weekend.

Highways that had been clogged with stuck cars reopened, and airports reported few cancellations as crews labored to move more than 3 feet of snow in some areas, restore power to hundreds of thousands of customers and open subways, bus routes and commuter railroads.

At least 12 people died in New York and New England, according to The Weather Channel –- five in Connecticut, three each in New York and Massachusetts, and one in Maine.

As of 8:40 a.m. ET Monday, airlines were reporting only 114 cancellations in the United States, many of them unrelated to the storm, according to FlightAware.com. That was a stark difference from Friday and Saturday, when thousands of flights were cancelled, mostly involving Boston and New York airports.

Slideshow: Northeast storm

Nicolaus Czarnecki / Zuma Press

A dangerous winter storm churned Friday into the Northeast as forecasters warned of a whiteout.

Launch slideshow

Power was being restored at a relatively fast clip, with outages in the Northeast below 150,000 early Monday, The Associated Press reported. About 650,000 customers were without power during parts of the weekend, but states lent help to each other, sending crews where they were most needed.

In New York, where the Big Apple had a comparatively minor snowfall but Long Island was hammered by high winds and heavy snow, Gov. Andrew Cuomo sent more than one-third of the state’s snow-removal equipment to hard-hit Suffolk Country.

On Sunday more than 675 pieces of snow-removal equipment and 975 people were working to clear roads and open the way for commuters to get back to work Monday, Cuomo said in a statement.

“Suffolk County has not seen a winter storm like [this] in years, and the massive amount of snow left behind effectively shut down the entire region,” the governor said.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick ordered the reopening of state offices for Monday, just two days after declaring a state of emergency as some communities were buried under more than 3 feet of snow. Boston got two feet of snow, and hurricane-strength wind gusts to the east of the city.

Connecticut, which saw the heaviest of the snow, still had considerable work to do Monday. Gov. Dannel Malloy kept nonessential state employees home.

“I understand that everyone wants to get back to normal as quickly as possible,” Malloy said Sunday. “Crews are working around the clock to accomplish that goal. But the last thing we need at this point is a typical morning rush-hour commute. Traffic build-up will only delay the effort to clear our roads."

Snow totals in parts of Connecticut were the storm’s worst. Hampden got 40 inches, Milford 38, and New Haven 34.

Connecticut was among the five states that declared a state of emergency, the others being Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Maine.

Major cities appeared set to get back to business Monday, though. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority said its services would resume, albeit with “significant delays expected” and buses running on snow routes.

In New York, the Metropolitan Transit Authority said subways and local and express buses would operate as normal Monday morning. Extra trains were put on some major commuter lines to help get workers back to the city.

As the Northeast shovels and plows, more could be on the way. Another winter storm heading into the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest could bring snow later Monday to parts of northern New England, particularly Maine, according to The Weather Channel.

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Updated at 11 p.m. ET: Be jealous, Midwesterners and Northeasterners: On Tuesday, Phoenix broke a record with highs of 81 degrees. Wednesday's forecast calls for 82 with a smattering of clouds.

Meanwhile, the Midwest continues to shiver under some of its coldest weather in years, and New England braced for temperatures as low as minus 50 degrees including the wind chill factor and up to a foot of snow.

An “Alberta Clipper” drawing arctic air southward from Canada has brought gusty winds and snow to a long line of states atop the country from North Dakota to northern Maine, creating treacherous driving conditions.

Temperatures plummeted below zero by double digits in the western Great Lakes region and northern Maine, and dozens of degrees below zero when the wind chill was taken into account, according to the National Weather Service.

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Parts of North Dakota, Minnesota and Maine were expected to see wind chills approaching 50 degrees below zero, according to the National Weather Service.

Major Great Lakes cities such as Chicago and Detroit struggled just to hit the teens Tuesday, and lake-effect snows were likely to continue in areas south of all five major lakes, Weather.com reported.

Cities along the I-95 corridor from Boston to Washington, D.C. had high temperatures only in the 20s Tuesday.

In New York, the peak of the “cold wave” were expected to chill the tri-state area Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, as low temperatures plunged into the low single digits throughout the area, NBCNewYork.com reported.

Forecasters said wind chills below zero were possible for Wednesday morning, so it could feel like negative 25 degrees outside, NBCNewYork.com reported.

The cold weather has already been blamed for at least one death as vehicles crashed in difficult conditions.

In Ohio alone, at least three interstate pileups injured dozens and left a 12-year-old girl dead.

Parts of Connecticut were hit with snow, as were areas north of New York City and along the coast, according to NBCNewYork.com.

NBCConnecticut.com said most of the state got a coating of snow.

NBC 10 Philadelphia

A multiple-vehicle accident tied up the Strawberry Mansion Bridge in Philadelphia.

As a low-pressure system off the New England coasts pulls the cold blast eastward, northern Massachusetts and parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine could see up to a foot of snow, a difficult Tuesday morning commute and uncomfortable wind chills, The Weather Channel reported.

In Pennsylvania, icy roads caused by the rush of bitter wind contributed to accident after accident, along with road closures and warnings to drivers to stay home or be extremely careful, NBCPhiladelphia.com reported.

Though much of the snow is forecast to move out to sea by Tuesday afternoon, the cold weather doesn’t appear to be ready to leave.

High temperatures across the Midwest and Northeast appear set to remain below freezing -- in most cases in the teens or below --until the weekend at least, the weather service predicts.

NBC News staff writer Isolde Raftery contributed reporting.

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Icy winds and bitter cold lashed the Midwest as a powerful storm made its way eastward and left New England preparing for up to a foot of snow.

Pushed by northwesterly winds, Arctic air was bringing wind chills near to minus 50 in Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Highs were expected to remain below zero into Tuesday, according to forecasters.

In Detroit, about 40,000 customers were without power early Monday. Utility DTE Energy blamed high winds for knocking out power Sunday to 120,000 customers.

DTE said it was receiving assistance from crews based in neighboring Ohio and Wisconsin, as well as outlying parts of Michigan.

"We expect to have the vast majority of our customers restored by midnight Monday," DTE said in a statement.

In Illinois, temperatures dipped into the single digits, with wind chills well below zero, NBCChicago.com reported. NBC Chicago meteorologist Cheryl Scott said wind chills could hover around 15 below zero, which would be the city's coldest weather in two years.

The National Weather Service issued lake-effect-snow warnings from western Michigan to western New York, and a winter storm watch for Boston and the surrounding area.

In Boston, forecasters predicted 4 to 8 inches of snow, poor visibility and slippery travel Monday evening as well as a difficult commute Tuesday morning.

Some high spots in northeast Massachusetts, eastern New Hampshire and southwest Maine could approach 12 inches of snow, The Weather Channel reported.

A hazardous-weather outlook reached into New Hampshire and Connecticut. Gale warnings were issued for much of the New England coast. 

A so-called Alberta Clipper could bring as much as three inches of snow to parts of Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey Monday afternoon and early evening.

However, Weather.com said there was "a small chance" that the Alberta Clipper could strengthen closer to the New Jersey coast, which would bring heavier snow to New York City, Long Island and New Jersey.

NBCChicago.com and weather.com contributed to this report.

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