Blizzard envelopes the US mid-west

Wind chills were expected to dip to 30 below in parts of the nation's midsection before the region awoke Thursday to deal with the storm's aftermath. The sprawling system unloaded as much as 2 feet of snow, crippled airports and stranded drivers in downtown Chicago.

Much of Texas was under a hard-freeze warning – issued on  Wednesday – and a light snowfall stubbornly lingered into the night in Maine. Officials in the Northeast had warned homeowners and businesses for days of the dangers of leaving snow piled up on rooftops.

As the 2,000-mile-long storm cloaked the region in ice and added inches to the piles of snow already settled across the landscape, the warnings were proven right. No one was seriously injured, however.

In Middletown, Conn., the entire third floor of a building failed, littering the street with bricks and snapping two trees, while a gas station canopy on New York's Long Island collapsed, as did an airplane hangar near Boston, damaging aircraft. Roof cave-ins also were reported in Rhode Island.

Some places in the Northeast that have gotten more snow so far this winter than they usually get the whole season are running out of places to put it. In Portland, Maine, the downtown snow-storage area was expected to reach capacity after this week's storm — the first time in three years that has happened.