Thousands of flights canceled as major winter storm moves across the US

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Thousands of flights across the U.S. set to take off over the weekend were canceled as a monster storm started to wreak havoc Saturday across much of the country, knocking out power and snarling major roadways with dangerous ice.

Widespread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain threatened nearly 180 million people — more than half the U.S. population — in a path stretching from the southern Rocky Mountains to New England, the National Weather Service said Saturday night. It warned people to brace for a string of frigid days.

“The snow and the ice will be very, very slow to melt and won’t be going away anytime soon, and that’s going to hinder any recovery efforts,” said Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.

“We just ask that everyone would be smart – stay home if possible,” Noem said.

As crews in some southern states began working to restore downed power lines Saturday, officials in some eastern states issued final warnings to residents.

“We are expecting a storm the likes of which we haven’t seen in years," New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Saturday while announcing restrictions on commercial vehicle travel and a 35 mph (56 kph) speed limit on highways. She added: “It’s a good weekend to stay indoors.”

Forecasters say the damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival that of a hurricane.

About 140,000 power outages were reported in the path of the winter storm Saturday, including more than 58,000 in Louisiana about 50,000 in Texas, according to poweroutage.us.

In Shelby County, Texas, near the Louisiana border, ice weighed down on pine trees and caused branches to snap, downing power lines. About a third of the county's 16,000 electric customers lost power on Saturday.

“We have hundreds of trees down and a lot of limbs in the road,” Shelby County Commissioner Stevie Smith said from his pickup truck. “I’ve got my crew out clearing roads as fast as we can. It’s a lot to deal with right now.”

There were reports of vehicles hitting fallen trees and trees falling onto houses in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, where more than half of all electric customers lost power.

“We got limbs that are dragging the ground,” said Mark Pierce, a spokesperson for the local sheriff’s office. “These trees are just completely saturated with ice.”

More than 13,000 flights were canceled Saturday and Sunday across the U.S., according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Sunday's cancellations, which are still growing, already are the most on any single day since the coronavirus pandemic, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

All Saturday flights were canceled at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City, and all Sunday morning flights also were called off, as officials aimed to restart service Sunday afternoon at Oklahoma’s biggest airport.

Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport, a major hub, saw more than 700 departing flights canceled on Saturday and nearly as many arriving flights called off. Disruptions were also piling up at airports in Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

By late Saturday afternoon, nearly all departing flights scheduled to leave Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Sunday had already been canceled.

Officials in Georgia advised people in the state’s northern regions to get off the roads by sundown Saturday and be prepared to stay put for at least 48 hours.

Will Lanxton, the senior state meteorologist, said Georgia could get “perhaps the biggest ice storm we have expected in more than a decade” followed by unusually cold temperatures.

“Ice is a whole different ballgame than snow,” Lanxton said. “Ice, you can’t do anything with. You can’t drive on it. It’s much more likely to bring down power lines and trees.”

Crews began treating highways with brine after midnight Saturday, with 1,800 workers on 12-hour shifts, Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry said.

“We’re going to do what we can to keep the ice from sticking to the roads,” McMurry said. “This is going to be a challenge.”

After earlier putting 500 National Guard members on standby, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Saturday that he was deploying 120 of them to northeast Georgia “to further strengthen our response in the hardest hit areas.”

After sweeping through the South, the storm was expected to move into the Northeast, dumping snow exceeding 1 foot (30 centimeters), the weather service predicted.

“Please, if you can avoid it, do not drive, do not travel, do not do anything that can potentially place you or your loved ones in danger,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Saturday. “Instead, I urge every New Yorker who can to put a warm sweater on, turn on the TV, watch ‘Mission Impossible’ for the 10th time, above all to stay inside.”

The Midwest saw windchills as low as minus 40 F (minus 40 C), meaning that frostbite could set in within 10 minutes. The minus 36 F (minus 38 C) reading in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, on Saturday morning was the coldest in almost 30 years.

In Minneapolis, the worst of an extreme cold wave was over, but protesters calling for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to leave Minnesota on Saturday still faced an outdoor temperature of minus 6 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 21 Celsius).

Workers from The Orange Tent Project, a Chicago nonprofit that provides cold weather tents and other supplies to unhoused individuals throughout the city, went out to check on those who did not or could not seek shelter.

“Seeing the forecasted weather, I knew we had to come out and do this today,” CEO Morgan McLuckie said.

Churches moved Sunday services online, and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, decided to hold its Saturday night radio performance without fans. Mardi Gras parades in Louisiana were canceled or rescheduled.

School closings were already announced for Monday in numerous cities, including Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia and Memphis, Tennessee.

Some universities in the South canceled classes for Monday, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Mississippi’s main campus in Oxford.

Around the southeast, people used the cancellations to have some fun. On a hill outside the Capitol building in Nashville, adult sledders on green discs and inflatable pool animals giggled with joy as they slid in the snow.

Weather forecasters said the winter storm was unusual.

“I think there are two parts of this storm that make it unique. One is just a broad expanse of spatial coverage of this event ... You’ve got 2,000 miles of country that’s being impacted by the storm with snow, sleet, and freezing rain,” said Josh Weiss, a meteorologist at NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center. “The other part of this storm that’s really impressive is what’s going to happen right afterward. We’re looking at extreme cold, record cold.”

Associated Press writers Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida, Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Julie Walker in New York, David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, George Walker in Nashville and Laura Bargfeld in Chicago contributed to this report. Amy reported from Atlanta and Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut.

Traffic moves west in the snow on I244 east of Yale Ave. Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026 in Tulsa, Okla. (Mike Simons /Tulsa World via AP)

The streets are ployed during a winter storm Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026 in Tulsa, Okla. (Mike Simons/Tulsa World via AP)

Drivers navigate icy and wet road conditions by the I35-I30 interchange Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Jacob Coleman skis across SkyDance Bridge over Interstate 40 during a snowstorm in Oklahoma City on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)

A flight status screen shows canceled flights to the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, area from the Salt Lake City International Airport amid a winter storm Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Sydney Schaefer)

Sea smoke rises from Casco Bay at sunrise on a 1-degree F. morning as a ferry boat makes its way to Portland, Maine, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Island commuters are bundled against the cold as they disembark from a ferry on a 1-degree F. morning, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Emma Nadeau, of North Yarmouth, Maine, photographs the pre-dawn scene overlooking Casco Bay on a 1-degree F. morning, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Emma Nadeau, of North Yarmouth, Maine, is bundled against the cold as she watches the sunrise on a 1-degree F. morning, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Ice crystals form inside a kitchen window in Lowville, New York, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Cara Anna)

Strong winds kick up snow in Lowville, New York, on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Cara Anna)

A person walks by a vehicle that was plowed in by snow in Grand Rapids, Mich. on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)

Work crews stage with de-icing materials in their trucks ahead of expected inclement weather in Plano, Texas, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Doug Kunde watches as steam is seen over Lake Michigan as frigid temperatures for the day are not expected to reach zero degrees Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

People walk on an ice covered beach along the shore of Lake Michigan, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Videos quickly emerged Saturday showing the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis protester by a Border Patrol agent, with Democratic leaders in Minnesota saying the footage showed the deadly encounter was the result of untrained federal officers overreacting and the Trump administration saying the man provoked the violence.

It was the second fatal shooting in Minneapolis by federal immigration authorities this month. The first, on Jan. 7, involved Renee Good. It also was captured on videos and produced a similar schism among political leaders.

On Saturday, at around 9 a.m., a Border Patrol agent shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti after a roughly 30-second scuffle. The Trump administration said shots were fired “defensively" against Pretti, who federal authorities said had a semiautomatic handgun and was “violently" resisting officers.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who said he watched one of several videos, said he saw “more than six masked agents pummeling one of our constituents, shooting him to death." Frey has said Minneapolis and St. Paul are being “invaded” by the administration's largest immigration crackdown, dubbed Operation Metro Surge.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti attacked officers, and Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said he wanted to do “maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” In posts on X, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called Pretti "a would-be assassin.”

The shooting Saturday occurred when officers were pursuing a man in the country illegally wanted for domestic assault, Bovino said. Protesters routinely try to disrupt such operations, and they sounded their high-pitched whistles, honked horns and yelled out at the officers.

Among them was Pretti. At one point, in a video obtained by The Associated Press, Pretti is standing in the street and holding up his phone. He is face-to-face with an officer in a tactical vest, who places his hand on Pretti and pushes him toward the sidewalk.

Pretti is talking to the officer, though it is not clear what he is saying.

The video shows protesters wandering in and out of the street as officers persist in trying to talk them back. One protester is put in handcuffs. Some officers are carrying pepper spray canisters.

Pretti comes in again when the video shows an officer wearing tactical gear shoving a protester. The protester, who is wearing a skirt over black tights and holding a water bottle, reaches out for Pretti.

The same officer shoves Pretti in his chest, leading Pretti and the other protester to stumble backward.

A different video then shows Pretti moving toward another protester, who falls over after being shoved by the same officer. Pretti moves between the protester and the officer, reaching his arms out toward the officer. The officer deploys pepper spray, and Pretti raises his hand and turns his face. The officer grabs Pretti's hand to bring it behind his back, and deploys the pepper spray canister again and then pushes Pretti away.

Seconds later, at least a half-dozen federal officers surround Pretti, who is wrestled to the ground and hit several times. Several agents try to bring Pretti’s arms behind his back, and he struggles.

Videos show an officer, who is hovering over the scuffle with his right hand on Pretti’s back, backs away from the group with what appears to be a gun in his right hand just before the first shot.

Someone shouts “gun, gun.” It is not clear if that’s a reference to the weapon authorities say Pretti had.

And then the first shot is heard.

Videos do not clearly show who fired the first shot. In one video, seconds before the first shot, one officer reaches for his belt and appears to draw his gun. That same officer is seen with a gun to Pretti’s back as three more shots ring out. Pretti slumps to the ground. Videos show the officers backing away, some with guns drawn. More shots are fired.

The Department of Homeland Security said Pretti was shot after he “approached” Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun. Officials did not say if Pretti, who is licensed to carry a concealed weapon, brandished the gun or kept it hidden.

An agency statement said officers fired “defensive shots” after Pretti “violently resisted” officers tried to disarm him.

Walz expressed dismay at the characterization.

“I’ve seen the videos, from several angles, and it’s sickening,” he said.

President Donald Trump weighed in on social media by lashing out Walz and Frey. Trump shared images of the gun that immigration officials said was recovered from Pretti and said “What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers?”

EDS NOTE: OBSCENITY - Armed community response members patrol near the scene where 37-year-old Alex Pretti was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol officer earlier in the day, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Demonstrators hold signs during a protest in response to the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis earlier in the day Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Caroline Brehman)