High winds, frigid temperatures and a lot of snow hit the East Coast overnight, and cities are scrambling to manage the impact. NBC's Ron Mott reports from Boston. 
 
 A massive winter storm dumped 20 inches of snow on parts of New England and looked set to cripple much of the Midwest and Northeast on Friday as millions faced dangerously cold temperatures. 
 
 Sub-zero wind chills arrived with the storm, and the biting wind and blowing snow have shut down interstates and airports alike. 
 
 John F. Kennedy Airport in New York was officially closed at 6:12 a.m. Friday and is not expected to re-open until 8:30 a.m., and Boston's Logan International is effectively shutdown, as well. 
 
 Interstate 84 in New York and the Long Island Expressway, closed at midnight as the storm roared in, remained so until 8 a.m. 
 
 Snowfall reports varied widely, with New York City receiving 7 inches, Baltimore some 3 to 6 inches, Philadelphia roughly 5 inches, Hartford 6 to 10 inches and Boston as much as 14 inches. 
 
 Some 20 inches have already fallen on other parts of Massachusetts, according to The Weather Channel lead meteorologist Michael Palmer. Boxford, Mass., northwest of Boston, reported 21 inches. 
 
 Schools across the Northeast, including all public schools in New York City, are closed Friday. 
 
 Winter weather and wind-chill advisories were in effect in at least 22 states, stretching from Chicago through the New York tri-state region into New England and affecting an area home to more than 100 million people. 
 
 NBC's Tom Costello provides a winter travel update, and reports that hundreds of flights have been canceled after a winter storm struck the East Coast. 
 
 The cold behind the snowstorm could be deadly, with parts of the Midwest expecting lows not seen since the mid-1980s, according to Palmer. 
 
 "It's going to be brutal," Weather Channel coordinating meteorologist Tom Moore said. "People that are vulnerable are really going to be hurting." 
 
 The high temperature in New York City will be in the teens on Friday during the day and drop to between 5 and 8 degrees in the evening, with the wind chill making it feel well below zero. 
 
 "This is nothing to be trifled with," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. "We have learned too well over the past few years the power of Mother Nature. We have seen the damage that has been done." 
 
 Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick dismissed all state workers at 3 p.m. on Thursday, and urged residents to minimize time outside and be aware of frostbite and hypothermia symptoms. "That is a very, very dangerous set of circumstances," he said. 
 
 Temperatures from upstate New York to Maine were below zero, and wind chills — the "feels like" effect — were minus-30 in some spots. 
 
 Across the Northeast, residents were fretting about the blast of bitter cold. 
 
 “I think I’m more concerned about the terrible cold Friday night rather than the storm itself," David Ball of Scituate, Mass., which was facing coastal flooding, told NBC affiliate WHDH. "Hopefully the power stays on." 
 
 The weather was affecting air travel, with some 1,600 flights being cancelled Friday on top of about 2,000 on Thursday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. 
 
 Thirty planes sat on the tarmac at Chicago’s Midway International Airport on Thursday night, with hundreds of passengers forced to wait while the runways were cleared for takeoff, reported NBC Chicago. Some travelers said they sat inside idled planes for up to four hours. 
 
 NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports from Long Island, NY, where a blizzard warning is still in effect and many public buildings have shut down. 
 
 “We arrived at 10 p.m. and its [sic] getting cold on the plane,” passenger Efraid Mata wrote in an email to NBC Chicago. 
 
 The delays and cancellations in the Midwest and Northeast created a logjam in the rest of the country’s flight schedules. Even in warm and sunny Southern California, dozens of flights at LAX in Los Angeles were put on hold or scrapped Thursday, with the same expected Friday. 
 
 The first brutal blast of cold shattered records in Minnesota on Thursday — and a second blast is expected to barrel from the Great Plains and Midwest on Sunday and Monday and into the East on Tuesday. 
 
 The second wave of icy weather will stretch from the upper Midwest to Kentucky and Tennessee, forecasters said. 
 
 Chicago will struggle to get above minus 8 and by Monday morning the wind will make it feel like it's 40 below zero there. 
 
 In Green Bay, Wis., where the Packers host an NFL playoff game Sunday evening, the low temperature could reach minus 18. 
 
 "Even Atlanta's northern suburbs could be in single digits by Monday night," Moore said. 
 
 Larry Wittmers, a hypothermia expert at the University of Minnesota-Duluth medical school, said it's not necessarily the coldest areas that face the most peril. 
 
 "True hypothermia cases turn up more often in more southern regions because people are not prepared and don't know what to do," Wittmers said. 
 
 How long people can safely spend outside depends on how wet or windy it is and how they are dressed, Wittmer said. Shoveling snow or other exercise can be dangerous because sweat reduces the insulation capability of clothing, and consuming alcohol can speed heat loss and reduce awareness of the cold. 
 
 And even though record snowfall is not expected, the cold could make roads even more hazardous because the snow-melting salt that homeowners and road crews use loses effectiveness at between 10 and 20 degrees. 
 
 To give plows time to work and guard against vehicles getting stranded, New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency and closed several major roads. New Jersey also declared a state of emergency. 
 
 "As this winter storm unfolds, bringing heavy snow and high winds to many parts of the state, I strongly urge all New Yorkers to exercise caution, avoid travel and stay indoors," Cuomo said. 
 
 At the Pine Street Inn shelter in Boston, vice president Heidi Daniels was preparing for a packed house. 
 
 "We won't turn anybody away," she said. "We'll pull out cots and mats and make sure everybody has a warm place to stay tonight." 
 
 NBC News' Tracy Connor, Daniel Arkin and Ron Mott contributed to this story. 
 
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 This story was originally published on ||||| Blistering cold air blasted across most of the country Tuesday, and a lake-effect snowstorm hammered the Great Lakes and parts of New York, hitting some places with more than 6 feet of snow — so much that the National Guard was activated around Buffalo. More than 100 miles of the New York State Thruway were closed, trapping a college basketball team on its bus more than 24 hours and counting. 
 
 The National Weather Service said Tuesday night that some areas of the Buffalo suburbs were approaching 76 inches of snow since Monday — that's the record for snowfall over a 24-hour period anywhere in the U.S. ever. 
 
 "This is a very intense storm, one of those record storms that we are going to remember for a few years beyond this date," Buffalo Public Works Commissioner Steven Stepniak said. 
 
 High temperatures struggled to climb above freezing in much of the Northeast, and they didn't even come close across most of the Midwest. Wind chills made it feel close to zero or colder in parts of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. 
 
 And there's no sign of a reprieve from the cold brought to the country by what meteorologists call an Omega block — cold that has been blamed for at least 19 deaths in traffic accidents on icy roads since Saturday, at least three deaths from weather-related heart attacks in Upstate New York and the death of a 16-year-old boy from exposure in Nebraska. 
 
 More than 100 cities could break records Tuesday night and Wednesday for the lowest daily high or low temperature for this time of year, The Weather Channel reported. That includes the Plains, the Midwest, the Deep South and the Northeast. 
 
 At 34 degrees, Anchorage, Alaska, was expected to be 12 degrees warmer Wednesday morning than Tallahassee, Florida. 
 
 A NASA satellite captured snow-band clouds over the Great Lakes on Tuesday. NASA 
 
 In New York, the problem was snow. Roads and schools were closed, and states of emergency were declared for some counties. The National Guard was activated in Erie County, which includes Buffalo, to help with cleanup. Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown bluntly told motorists at a news conference to stay off the streets and warned would-be visitors not to even think about coming into town as the city's traffic office reported that at least 100 vehicles were stranded on main streets in the southern half of the city. 
 
 Meanwhile, a 100-mile-long stretch of Interstate 90 from Rochester, New York, to the Pennsylvania state line — known as the New York State Thruway — was shut down Tuesday night because of whiteout conditions. State officials were checking on their welfare, NBC station WHEC of Rochester reported. 
 
 The Niagara University Purple Eagles women's basketball team was trying to return home from Pittsburgh after a loss to the Pitt Panthers on Monday night when the team bus got stuck on the Thruway just 50 miles from their campus in Buffalo. They remained stuck there Tuesday night — live-tweeting their experience after more than 24 hours on board, thanks to the bus' Wi-Fi. 
 
 The team decided to stay on the bus rather than to be evacuated. Ellen Pzepasniak, a spokeswoman for the Erie County executive's office, said emergency officials have been checking up on the bus, and "there are no reported issues." 
 
 RELATED: Follow the Niagara University Basketball Team's Adventure on Twitter 
 
 Because the wind wasn't expected to shift direction much, forecasters said snow would pile especially high. Lancaster, New York, had 4 feet on the ground by mid-afternoon, and Orchard Park had 3 feet. About 2 feet was on the ground in parts of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 
 
 "By the time all is said and done, parts of Upstate New York could be buried in over 5 feet of new snow," said Jonathan Erdman, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel. 
 
 In-Depth 
 
 Social 
 
 OK, this is the topper for today, check out this youtube video of the #LakeEffect snow band !!! https://t.co/PdUbTVGyhl — Tom Niziol (@TomNiziol) November 18, 2014 
 
 Good luck getting out of that parking spot! #Hamburg NY sits at 22 inches & counting pic.twitter.com/AR4hgoluUy — Mike Bettes (@mikebettes) November 18, 2014 
 
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 M. Alex Johnson, Cassandra Vinograd and Erin McClam ||||| As tornadoes ripped through the South, more than a foot of snow was dumped over parts of the Midwest, making for a post-Christmas travel nightmare. NBC's Mike Seidel reports. 
 
 A wicked winter storm was sweeping east across the United States Wednesday, creating a post-holiday travel nightmare with more than a foot of snow in some places and thousands of flights canceled or delayed. 
 
 "Blizzard warnings stretch for 730 continuous miles due to Winter Storm Euclid," The Weather Channel’s Tom Niziol reported. 
 
 The white-out came a day after a Christmas storm unleashed heavy snow, deadly winds and even some tornadoes on the nation’s midsection, killing at least three people. 
 
 As millions of Americans braced for snow, rain, ice or more twisters, nearly 2,000 flights had been canceled and 10,000 were delayed, many at Dallas/Fort Worth, Philadelphia International, and Cleveland's Hopkins International, according to the travel website FllightStats.com. American Airlines had to cancel 500 flights, while Delta scrapped 200. 
 
 Read more at The Weather Channel 
 
 The forecast called for heavy snow from Indiana to New York and by mid-afternoon it was piling up: The National Weather Service reported 14.5 inches in Marion, Ill.; 11.8 inches in Bloomfield, Ind.; 9 inches in Brookville, Ohio; 7 inches in Bardwell, Ky.; and Frostburg, Md. Up to 3 inches of rain had fallen in North and South Carolina. 
 
 The National Weather Service said Wednesday night that spotters had reported up to a foot of snow in some Pennsylvania counties. Forecasters predicted 10 to 12 inches of snow in western and central Massachusetts. 
 
 The system was expected to taper off into a mix of rain and snow closer to the coast, where little or no accumulation was expected in such cities as Philadelphia, Boston and New York. 
 
 The storm left freezing temperatures in its aftermath, and forecasters also said parts of the Southeast from Virginia to Florida would see severe thunderstorms. 
 
 After the storm socked little Albion, Ill., with 18 inches of snow, city worker Renee Galen’s SUV got stuck and she got to her office the only way she could. 
 
 On one of the busiest travel days of the year, bad weather has forced airlines to cancel or delay flights. NBC's Katy Tur reports. 
 
 "One of the city guys came by with a snowplow and I flagged him down and rode to work with him," Galen told NBC News. 
 
 "I had to get to work because today was the last day to file for city elections. Believe it or not, I’ve had three people come in to file." 
 
 In Indianapolis, seven inches of snow fell in three hours Wednesday morning, bringing post-Christmas shopping to a halt, the Indianapolis Star reported. 
 
 Stephen Canter, 44, ventured out before 8 a.m., and the roads were thick with snow when he headed back 30 minutes later. 
 
 "By the time I got home, the street was covered," he told the newspaper. "I don't remember snow like this since Valentine's Day of 2007." 
 
 Indiana State Police received 100 calls of crashes or cars sliding off roads before noon and warned motorists that if they got into trouble it could take a while to get them help, NBC affiliate WTHR.com reported. 
 
 Cars and several 18-wheelers were stuck in the ice along 1-70, and the snow fell faster than crews could clear the roads. 
 
 "The biggest problem is the blowing. We got some high winds and the roads are really beginning to drift bad," Ron Sharp with Wayne County Emergency Management told the station. 
 
 Parts of New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania are also forecast to get hit with more than a foot of snow, and New England could get up to a foot. 
 
 The blizzard warning in Ohio prompted United Airlines to cancel at least 60 percent of their flights at Cleveland Hopkins Airport beginning at noon on Wednesday, according to NBC affiliate WKYC.com. About 1,000 people spent the night on cots at Dallas/Fort Worth after their Tuesday night and Wednesday morning flights were scrapped. 
 
 Hundreds of flights delayed, canceled as holiday storms travel across country 
 
 With Rochester, N.Y., slated to get up to a foot of snow, hordes of worried residents descended on the hardware stores. 
 
 “Un-freaking-believable! We’ve sold 225 shovels since 9 o’clock this morning,” said Tom Green, owner of Mayer Paint and Hardware. “Rock salt – I couldn’t tell you how many thousands of pounds I’ve sold today. People are very concerned.” 
 
 Green noted that snowstorms are hardly rare in Rochester. 
 
 “But this is the first big one,” he said. “And it’s happening at Christmas.” 
 
 The weather system, which started over the weekend, wreaked havoc on Christmas. It knocked out power to tens of thousands of people and was blamed for at least five deaths. 
 
 In Enola, Ark., two toddlers were killed when a car lost control on an ice-slicked highway and spun into oncoming traffic, state police said. 
 
 Wind-toppled trees killed a pickup truck driver near Houston, Texas, and a 53-year-old man in north Louisiana. NBC affiliate KJRH reported that a 28-year-old woman was killed in a crash on a snowy highway near Fairview, Okla. 
 
 Christmas Day tornadoes –- the preliminary count was at least 21, according to the Weather Channel -- battered Southern states. And Little Rock, Ark., didn’t just have a rare white Christmas –- it had its snowiest day ever, with nine inches on the ground. 
 
 The storms contributed to a 21-vehicle pile-up Tuesday that shut down a major highway in Oklahoma City, as well as tens of thousands of power outages. Emergency service provider MedStar told NBCDFW.com it responded to 71 crashes in the Fort Worth area between 5 p.m. and 9:50 p.m. Tuesday evening. 
 
 As it tracked east, authorities were taking the storm seriously. 
 
 In Indianapolis, Mayor Greg Ballard ordered "non-essential" workers to stay home and off roads. Cleveland asked businesses to send workers home by 1:30 p.m., NBC affiliate WKYC.com reported. Homeowners in coastal Long Island, ravaged by Superstorm Sandy in October, were told to take precautions to prevent flooding with seas expected to peak at 15 feet, NBCNewYork.com reported. 
 
 By the time it leaves the New England coast Friday, the storm will have left snow from coast to coast –- and there could be another wallop coming soon. 
 
 Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton said a weather pattern with the potential to become Winter Storm Freyr is poised to enter the West Coast on Wednesday and move through the Rockies on Thursday. It could then head for the lower Mississippi Valley, then the Southeast and hit the Northeast on Sunday. 
 
 Read more at weather.com 
 
 The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 
 
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– Winter storm Hercules continues to flex its muscles, dumping well over a foot of snow in places, sparking states of emergency, and bringing with it freezing temperatures and the threat of hypothermia. Experts warn that even shoveling your driveway can be dangerous. The latest: It seems the warning of up to a foot of snow might have been wishful thinking for some: Nearly two feet fell in some areas, including 21 inches in Boxford, Mass. (that's about 30 miles north of Boston), and 18 inches near both Gurnee, Ill., and Rochester, NY, as of early this morning, Weather Underground and the AP report. NBC News notes winter weather and wind chill warnings have been in effect in at least 22 states, affecting more than 100 million people from Chicago through the New York tri-state area into New England. Both New York and New Jersey have declared states of emergency. Along with the 2,000 flights cancelled yesterday, another 1,350 have been grounded today, according to NBC News. JFK Airport this morning suspended flights because of zero visibility; Boston's Logan is effectively non-operational as well. A meteorologist told NBC that some areas in the Midwest could see chilling temperatures not recorded since the mid-1980s. "People that are vulnerable are really going to be hurting," added one. The cold could be bad news for road crews and homeowners: Snow-melting salt stops working between 10 and 20 degrees. And a second icy wave is coming, expected to hit the Midwest on Sunday and Monday then move east. It's going to be seriously cold, with an expected high in Chicago on Monday of -8. Plenty of kids are getting an extended holiday today, with schools, including all public schools in Boston and New York City, closed throughout the region. But Pennsylvania saw a storm-related tragedy: A salt yard worker prepping for the storm was killed when a 100-foot pile of rock salt buried him.