Frigid cold grips US as cities dig out after snowstorm

Children at play on a snow-covered hill in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. After a powerful winter storm dumped heavy snow, sleet and ice across wide swaths of the U.S., millions of people on Monday were facing new dangers: perilously cold temperatures and widespread power outages that forecasters and local governments warned could last for days. (Angelina Katsanis/The New York Times)

By MAX KIM and YAN ZHUANG

Millions of people across parts of the U.S. were facing dangerously cold temperatures Monday, as local governments and residents scrambled to restore damaged infrastructure and halted services after a major winter storm.

The storm dumped more than a foot of snow in at least 20 states, from New Mexico to Maine, according to preliminary figures from the National Weather Service. At least 11 deaths were reported across the country. Nearly 80 million people remained under an extreme cold warning Monday, and forecasters warned that temperatures would remain dangerously below normal for days in many areas.

Transit disruptions are expected to continue in many cities Monday, as officials advised against travel and reduced schedules for trains and buses. Air travel was also still disrupted, with more than 4,000 cancellations for U.S. flights early Monday, according to airline tracker FlightAware.

Major institutions in the Northeast remained closed Monday, including the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo. New York City’s public schools switched to remote learning Monday in response to the heavy snowfall.

In parts of the Midwest, the South and the mid-Atlantic, where freezing rain, wind and snow brought down trees and power lines, thousands of households are expected to remain powerless as the week begins. About 800,000 electricity customers were without power in the U.S. on Monday, with Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana experiencing the most outages, according to Poweroutage.us.

Here’s what we’re covering:

— Flight cancellations: Thousands of flights across dozens of airports remained canceled and delayed Monday morning. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that he expected travel to return to normal levels by Wednesday.

— Another storm?: After a computer model began hinting that a classic nor’easter could strike the East Coast next weekend, meteorologists sought to tamp down speculation.

— Snow in Canada: The storm also brought near-record snowfall to parts of Canada. Toronto Pearson International Airport recorded about 18 inches by late Sunday.

— Power outages: Freezing rain left tens of thousands of people without power in one hard-hit Mississippi county.