What you need to know about the pre-Christmas storm affecting your holiday travel plans

A massive winter storm hitting the US has left hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the Northeast without power. Freezing temperatures are likely to turn to a mixture of snow and ice, making for grim road conditions with poor visibility. Travel is also being snarled, with surge flooding, road closures and transportation cancellations.
The shift in temperatures won't be quite extreme in New York, but the National Weather Service are still calling it a "once in a generation" storm.
"Mother Nature is going to throw everything she has at us, and that means wind, ice, snow, freezing rain,” Governor Kathy Hochul said Thursday. "It’s going to be extraordinary."
Hochul declared a state of emergency for the entire state starting Thursday evening and continuing through Monday.
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont activated the state's emergency operations center on Friday morning in response to the significant wind and rain storm.
"Following the storm on Friday, temperatures are expected to plummet causing icy road conditions. We’ve been in regular contact with the utility companies, which have brought in hundreds out-of-state crews on this holiday weekend in anticipation of outages," Lamont said.
Shelters are open across the state and anyone can call 2-1-1 to get connected to the nearest available location in Connecticut.