More than 170 million people are on alert for a brutal weekend storm that's going to bring dangerous ice and snow to the South, bitter cold to the Midwest, and snowfall to the Northeast.

Heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain are slamming large parts of the U.S. as the dangerously cold weather causes major power outages and travel disruptions.

Power lines were draped in ice, and hundreds of thousands of people in the Southeast were left without electricity.