Winter Storm Ezra Slams Holiday Travel With Blizzard Conditions, Power Outages and Flight Cancellations

By midafternoon Monday, the departure boards at Detroit Metropolitan Airport were a wall of red. Flights to New York, Boston and Atlanta blinked from “delayed” to “canceled” as crews battled snow squalls and 50 mph wind gusts outside. On Interstate 35 in Iowa, troopers were still working through the wreckage of a chain-reaction crash in whiteout conditions. Along the Lake Michigan shore in Michigan, tens of thousands of homes sat dark as temperatures plunged.

The common cause was Winter Storm Ezra, a sprawling system that intensified into a so-called bomb cyclone over the northern United States at the height of the holiday travel rush.

A storm timed for maximum disruption

The storm, which roared from the Upper Midwest across the Great Lakes into the Northeast from Sunday through Tuesday, brought blizzard conditions, life-threatening wind chills and widespread power failures to one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

By 3:25 p.m. Eastern time Monday, nearly 6,000 flights had been delayed and 751 canceled within, into or out of the United States, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware, as reported by Reuters. Since Friday, more than 3,600 flights had been canceled and over 30,000 delayed, as Ezra compounded disruptions from an earlier system, Winter Storm Devin.

On the ground, authorities closed long stretches of major highways, warned residents not to travel and struggled to keep up with hundreds of crashes from Iowa to New York. Utilities in Michigan and upstate New York called in crews from other states and Canada to repair power lines toppled by heavy snow and high winds just as an Arctic air mass drove temperatures sharply lower.

What makes a “bomb cyclone”

Forecasters had warned that Ezra would rapidly deepen into a powerful extratropical cyclone as dense, cold air poured south from Canada and collided with unusually warm, moist air over the central United States. When the central pressure of such a storm drops by at least 24 millibars in 24 hours, meteorologists call it a bomb cyclone—shorthand for explosive intensification.

“This system is deepening rapidly, with widespread blizzard conditions expected across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes,” the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center said in a set of key messages it circulated Sunday. The center warned that travel in affected areas could become “perilous to impossible,” and that ice accumulations in parts of New England would add to the danger.

Local Weather Service offices used unusually blunt language. The Twin Cities office in Minnesota issued an urgent blizzard warning Sunday, telling residents that “DANGEROUS, POTENTIALLY LIFE-THREATENING TRAVEL CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED TODAY THROUGH EARLY MONDAY MORNING.” In social media posts and alerts, the office urged people in the warned area to postpone all travel.

Crashes and closures from Iowa to Michigan

Despite those warnings, law enforcement agencies reported a surge of accidents as the storm’s snow bands and fierce winds reduced visibility to near zero.

In Iowa, state troopers responded to at least 31 crashes on Sunday alone, including eight with injuries and one that was fatal, according to the Iowa State Patrol. Officials said the worst conditions were along Interstate 35 north of Des Moines, where a multivehicle pileup in whiteout conditions snarled traffic and prompted extended closures. Some later reports put the number of vehicles involved at more than 20 and cited two deaths, underscoring that damage assessments were still evolving as authorities cleared the scene.

Minnesota’s State Patrol reported hundreds of crashes and spinouts on Sunday, including 179 property-damage crashes, a dozen injury crashes and more than 160 vehicles off the road. Sections of Interstates 35 and 90 in southern Minnesota were closed or placed under “no travel advised” designations as winds gusted over 40 mph and snow drifted across lanes.

In Michigan, Ezra arrived in waves of heavy snow and intense squalls. Northbound Interstate 75 in Detroit was shut down after a pileup near McNichols Road. South and west of the city, crashes and a semi-truck fire forced closures on Interstate 196 in Allegan County and U.S. 31 near the Lake Michigan shore. The Weather Service office in Detroit issued snow squall warnings for multiple counties Monday, warning drivers that nearly instantaneous whiteouts and flash freezes could cause “sudden zero visibility and rapidly deteriorating road conditions.”

Lake-effect snow and a statewide emergency in New York

Farther east, the storm’s wraparound winds tapped the relatively warm waters of the Great Lakes and fueled long-lived lake-effect snow bands. The Weather Service in Buffalo issued winter storm warnings for counties east of Lakes Erie and Ontario, forecasting 1 to 3 feet of snow in some areas, with wind gusts up to 45 mph.

In a statement, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul expanded an existing state of emergency to cover the entire state Monday, citing “hazardous travel with near-whiteout conditions” and directing nonessential state workers in the hardest-hit regions to work from home.

“We are urging New Yorkers to stay off the roads and avoid unnecessary travel so that our plow crews and first responders can do their jobs safely,” Hochul said.

Airports, airlines and markets react

In the air, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops and ground-delay programs at several major hubs to manage safety and congestion as snow and wind hampered operations.

Detroit Metro, a key connecting hub for Delta Air Lines, was under a ground stop for Delta flights early Monday, an order FAA data showed was later extended into the morning. Flight-tracking logs indicated that by Monday evening, more than 430 flights at the airport had been delayed and more than 70 canceled.

Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia faced its own ground stop because of high winds, while airports in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts reported hours-long arrival and departure delays as snow, rain and crosswinds moved through.

Delta, which operates a large share of flights in the affected corridor, led U.S. carriers in cancellations Monday. Shares of Delta fell nearly 3% in afternoon trading, while United Airlines, American Airlines and Alaska Air Group each fell around 2%. Airlines said they had issued travel waivers allowing customers to change itineraries without fees in regions hit by Winter Storms Devin and Ezra.

Power outages as temperatures plunge

On the power grid, Ezra’s winds and heavy, wet snow brought down trees and distribution lines across the Great Lakes region. At the peak of the storm Monday midday, more than 200,000 customers in the Midwest were without electricity, including over 110,000 in Michigan and tens of thousands in Ohio, according to utility and outage reports.

Consumers Energy, which serves much of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, said roughly 230,000 of its customers lost power during the storm and an earlier bout of freezing rain. The company said mutual-aid crews from other states and Canada helped restore electricity to 90% of those customers by late Tuesday, with the remaining outages expected to be cleared overnight into Wednesday.

In upstate New York, National Grid reported that damaging winds and heavy snow had cut power to more than 150,000 customers. By Tuesday afternoon, the company said it had restored service to about 95% of those affected, with more than 3,400 line, tree and field personnel deployed across its service area.

The timing of those outages compounded the storm’s impact. Behind Ezra, temperatures dropped 30 to 40 degrees in some locations within a day. Highs in Minneapolis fell from the mid-30s Fahrenheit on Sunday to below 20 degrees Monday. Des Moines sank from the low 40s into the teens, while Chicago tumbled from the 50s into the 20s. Parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota saw wind chills near 25 degrees below zero.

Local governments opened warming centers and urged residents to check on elderly neighbors and people using medical equipment that requires electricity.

A familiar pattern of high-impact winter weather

Federal emergency officials and transportation regulators said the storm underlined the need for caution as winter weather patterns grow more volatile.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency warned over the weekend that driving in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes could be dangerous as blizzardlike conditions and ice developed. The FAA said it would continue to adjust air traffic flow programs as conditions changed, prioritizing safety.

While Ezra’s full toll is still being assessed, the storm appears less deadly and somewhat narrower in scope than Winter Storm Elliott, the late-December 2022 bomb cyclone that killed more than 100 people and caused thousands of flight cancellations over several days.

Still, Ezra adds to what private forecasters expect will be another year of extraordinary U.S. weather losses. AccuWeather has estimated that extreme weather in 2025 will cost the nation between $378 billion and $424 billion in damage and economic disruption, though no separate figure has been calculated for this storm alone.

Meteorologists stress that no single event can be attributed directly to climate change, but they say Ezra fits a pattern of high-impact winter storms that deliver sharp temperature swings, intense winds and localized records rather than months of steady cold.

The cleanup continues

As Ezra’s center moved into Canada on Tuesday and skies slowly cleared over the Great Lakes, the backlog it left behind was still being sorted. Airlines rebooked passengers days after their original departures. Plow drivers worked back roads choked with drifted snow. Utility crews made final repairs in remote stretches of forest and farmland.

For millions of travelers and residents, the storm turned what is usually a predictable week of family visits and year-end business into a reminder that in a changing climate and an aging infrastructure system, even a few days of bad weather can echo far longer than the wind and snow that ushered it in.