We want to begin with a dangerous winter storm that is moving across the nation with a mix of heavy snow, freezing rain, ice and brutally cold temperatures. The heaviest snow totals today are expected from St. Louis to Cleveland while Central Illinois and Northern Indiana could see more than eighteen inches before it’s all over. More than one hundred and ten million Americans are under winter storm alerts in at least twenty-five states from Colorado to Maine. The storms mean travel nightmares across much of the country with airlines cancelling more than five thousand flights for today and tomorrow.

The windy city living up to the billing tonight. This is a massive storm impacting a wide swath of the middle of country. And the next chapter could be equally as dangerous. Rain turning to sleet and sheets of ice. A brutal winter storm barreling across more than a dozen states. Two thousand miles of mess, snow, sleet, freezing rain and Arctic cold. Interstate near Kansas City grinding to a halt, littered with semis, turned like toys. Tonight, concern about sleet and ice in Texas almost a year after a freeze there led to one of the nation’s biggest blackouts. And here in Chicago amid sloppy roads tonight, a number of schools are already announced they will go remote or close all together tomorrow.