As the storm took shape over the Great Lakes on Thursday, a weather phenomenon known as a bomb cyclone was likely to develop from a "rapidly deepening low-pressure" system, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. The cyclone could spawn snowfalls of a half inch (1.25 cm) per hour and howling winds from the Upper Midwest to the interior Northeast, producing near-zero visibility, the weather service said. "It's dangerous and threatening," President Joe Biden said at the White House, urging Americans with travel plans to not delay and to set off on Thursday. Hundreds of Texans died in February 2021 after the state's power grid failed amid wintry storms, leaving millions without electricity. Greg Carbin, chief of forecast operations at the NWS Weather Prediction Center in Maryland, said freezing or below-freezing cold would bisect central Florida, with temperatures about 25 degrees below normal.

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