WASHINGTON (AP) — Warm Arctic waters and cold continental land are combining to stretch the dreaded polar vortex in a way that will send much of the United States a devastating dose of winter weather later this week with swaths of painful subzero temperatures, heavy snow and powerline-toppling ice.
Meteorologists said the eastern two-thirds of the nation is threatened with a winter storm that could rival the damage of a major hurricane and has some origins in an Arctic that is warming from climate change. They warn that the frigid weather is likely to stick around through the rest of January and into early February, meaning the snow and ice that accumulates will take a long time to melt.
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Storm clouds that had brought brief snow flurries begin to clear, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, over Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A large wave from Lake Michigan sends ice balls into the air as it crashes into the South Pierhead Outer Light at Grand Haven State Park in Grand Haven, Mich., Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)
Vehicles are driven through whiteout conditions along Lake Michigan Drive during a winter storm warning in Ottawa County, Mich. on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)
Ice forms along the Lake Michigan shore as People walk their dogs on a beach, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)
Forecasts have the storm, expected to hit starting Friday, stretching from New Mexico to New England and across the Deep South. About 230 million people face temperatures of 20 degrees (-7 degrees Celsius) or colder and around 150 million are likely to be hit by snow and ice, with many Americans getting both, according to the National Weather Service.
“I think people are underestimating just how bad it’s going to be,” said former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Ryan Maue, now a private meteorologist.
The polar vortex, a patch of bitterly cold air that often stays penned up in northern Canada and Alaska, is being elongated by a wave in the upper atmosphere that goes back to a relatively ice-free part of the Arctic and snow-buried Siberia. As the bone-chilling temperatures sweep through the U.S., they'll meet with moisture from off California and the Gulf of Mexico to set up crippling ice and snow in many areas.
The origins of the system begin in the Arctic, where relatively warmer temperatures add energy to the polar vortex and help push its cold air south.
“The atmosphere is aligned perfectly that the pattern is locked into this warm Arctic, cold continent," Maue said. "And it’s not just here for us in North America, but the landmass of Eastern Europe to Siberia is also exceptionally cold. The whole hemisphere has gone into the deep freeze.”
As far back as October 2025, changes in the Arctic and low sea ice were setting up conditions for the kind of stretched polar vortex that brings severe winter weather to the U.S., said winter weather expert Judah Cohen, an MIT research scientist. Heavy Siberian snowfall added to the push-and-pull of weather that warps the shape of the normally mostly circular air pattern. Those conditions “kind of loaded the dice a bit'' for a stretching of the polar vortex, he said.
Cohen co-authored a July 2025 study that found more stretched polar vortex events linked to severe winter weather bursts in the central and eastern U.S. over the past decade. Cohen said part of the reason is that dramatically low sea ice in the Barents and Kara seas in the Arctic helps set up a pattern of waves that end up causing U.S. cold bursts. A warmer Arctic is causing sea ice in that region to shrink faster than other places, studies have found.
Arctic sea ice is at a record low extent for this time of year, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The center of the stretched polar vortex will be somewhere above Duluth, Minnesota, by Friday morning, ushering in “long-lasting brutal cold,” Maue said. Temperatures in the North and Midwest will get about as cold as possible, even down to minus 25 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 32 to minus 34 degrees Celsius), Maue said. The average low temperature for the Lower 48 states will dance around 11 or 12 degrees (minus 12 to minus 11 degrees Celsius) on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, Maue said.
Two Great Lakes — Erie and Ontario — may freeze up, which would at least reduce the famed lake-effect snow a bit, Maue said.
National Weather Service meteorologist Zack Taylor of the national Weather Prediction Center said most areas east of the Rockies will be impacted by the bitter cold, snow or ice. Treacherous freezing rain could stretch from the southern plains through the mid-South and into the Carolinas, he said.
“We’re looking at the potential for impactful ice accumulation. So the kind of ice accumulation that could cause significant or widespread power outages or potentially significant tree damage,” he said.
And if you don't get ice, you could get “another significant swath of heavy snow,” Taylor said. He said it was too early to predict how many inches will fall, but “significant snowfall accumulations” could hit "the Ozarks region, Tennessee and Ohio valleys, the central Appalachians, and then into the mid-Atlantic, and perhaps into the portions of the northeast.”
Maue said in the mid-Atlantic around the nation's capital, there's a possibility that “you can get two blizzards on top of each other in the next 14 days.”
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Storm clouds that had brought brief snow flurries begin to clear, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, over Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A large wave from Lake Michigan sends ice balls into the air as it crashes into the South Pierhead Outer Light at Grand Haven State Park in Grand Haven, Mich., Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)
Vehicles are driven through whiteout conditions along Lake Michigan Drive during a winter storm warning in Ottawa County, Mich. on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)
Ice forms along the Lake Michigan shore as People walk their dogs on a beach, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)
MILAN (AP) — At the Milan Cortina Olympic Games, winning medals isn’t the only thing making hearts swell. From the ice rinks to the snowy hills, love is in the frozen air.
Some competitions already seem to have Cupid in attendance.
Dutch skater Jutta Leerdam set an Olympic record in the 1000-meter race, then turned to find her fiancé Jake Paul in the stands; both visibly weeping, they made heart signs to one another with their hands. And downhill skiing champion Breezy Johnson ’s longtime boyfriend proposed to her near the finish line Thursday while surrounded by members of the U.S. Ski Team.
Valentine's Day for athletes and attendees at the Games doesn't usually mean grand gestures, but it's no less special.
Valentine’s Day is the finals for the women’s skeleton event. That means that Kim Meylemans of Belgium and Nicole Rocha Silveira of Brazil — an international couple who play for their separate national teams — will be too busy for a romantic dinner. They told The Associated Press they didn’t even bring gifts to exchange.
But since they are together all the time, “It’s always a bit of a Valentine's Day," Meylemans said. “It is part of our sport every day, our love.”
The two feel fortunate their national Olympic committees arranged for them to bunk together at Cortina's Olympic village, since typically only teammates share housing. Half their room is decorated for Belgium, the other half Brazil.
Rocha Silveira was new to the sport in 2019 when Meylemans was already competing in World Cup races. They fell in love during the pandemic while sharing short-term rentals, since many hotels closed.
Fast forward to 2024, and they unknowingly bought identical engagement rings and planned proposals for the same boat trip in Brazil while on vacation. They married last August.
When they compete, they high-five and kiss before each run, wishing the other well.
“It doesn’t matter which one is on the podium. At the end of the day, it’s a victory for our team," Meylemans said.
Rocha Silveira said it’s important their relationship appears during these Games in Italy, where same-sex marriages aren't recognized and only married heterosexual couples are allowed to jointly adopt.
It’s a great place to “show it even more,” and “encourage and inspire people that they can be themselves,” she said.
Lori and Curtis Brown have been married for over 30 years and will be spend Valentine's Day at the skating arena where they are volunteering for this year’s Winter Olympics.
About 18,000 volunteers are spread across the venues in northern Italy — a sea of navy blue uniforms keeping the Olympics running around the clock, with duties such as giving directions, accompanying athletes to venues, crowd control and medical support.
Curtis, 60, said neither of them had realized they were scheduled to work. Now, they're hoping they can coincide their breaks to have dinner together, perhaps surrounded by the rest of the volunteers, he joked.
“This is the most special Valentine’s Day of our lives,” Curtis said. “Because we’re both here, we’re both on the same page, we’re both enjoying this adventure together.”
While presents are neither’s love language, Lori, 61, told the AP she bought boxer briefs from the official Milan Cortina souvenir store. Curtis hadn’t bought anything for her.
“It’s not so much about gift giving, just going out and doing something together,” said Lori, 61. She spoke while sitting beside Curtis, so perhaps she’ll be surprised on Saturday.
Canadian hockey forward Laura Stacey and her wife, team captain Marie-Philip Poulin, have a different kind of date: playing Germany's team in the quarterfinals in Milan.
“We have a game, we have a big game, so spending it together. We’re pretty lucky,” Stacey said. “Most people don’t get to do what they love, chasing their dreams together, and we do. So I think on February 14th, I think it’s important for us to just appreciate that and not take it for granted."
Aside from taking on Germany, they don't have plans — but Stacey said they will surely at least give each other cards.
Many other couples are at the Olympics, some teammates and others competing against each other.
— U.S. alpine skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin — that sport’s all-time wins leader — is engaged to Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, who returned to racing this season after dealing with major injuries.
— Latvia’s luge team includes the husband-and-wife pair of Martins Bots and Elina Bota, both single sliders.
— Italy’s luge team Dominik Fischnaller and the U.S.'s Emily Sweeney married last year after dating for almost 15 years.
— U.S. bobsledding has a power couple with reigning women’s monobloc world champion Kaysha Love engaged to men’s push athlete Hunter Powell. She’s in the Olympics for the second time, while he's making his debut.
— American figure skaters Madison Chock and Evan Bates were married in 2024 and won a silver medal on Wednesday.
—Curling may have the most well-known couples of any sport. Norway’s Magnus Nedregotten and Kristin Skaslien have been together since 2008 and won bronze in Pyeongchang. Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant of Canada married in 2022 and were favorites this year. There are Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller and Briar Schwalller-Huerlimann, too; they brought their baby and photos of him carrying a curling broom twice his size went viral.
He looked like a curling Cupid.
Associated Press writers Jennifer McDermott in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy and John Wawrow in Milan contributed to this report.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Belgium's Kim Meylemans, right, and Brazil's Nicole Rocha Silveira, left, embrace at the finish during a women's skeleton run at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Belgium's Kim Meylemans, left, and Brazil's Nicole Rocha Silveira react, at the finish during a women's skeleton run at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Brasil's Nicole Rocha Silveira arrives at the finish during a women's skeleton training session at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Belgium's Kim Meylemans starts for a women's skeleton run at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
Belgium's Kim Meylemans, left, and Brazil's Nicole Rocha Silveira react, at the finish during a women's skeleton run at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
