(Reuters)

Millions of Americans from the Great Plains to the East Coast faced the threat of blizzards, heavy snow, treacherous ice and freezing rain through to tomorrow, the National Weather Service said on Saturday (January 4).

Governors in Kentucky and Virginia declared states of emergency ahead of the winter storm.

“The storm is still taking shape,” meteorologist Rich Bann of the NWS’s Weather Prediction Center said Saturday evening. “But this thing has multiple hazards from heavy snows in the Plains to significant icing covering roads farther south.”

He added that more than 60 million people in the United States were affected by winter weather warnings, watches or advisories this past weekend.