It affected much of North America in some form, producing various kinds of severe weather including a major ice storm, blizzard conditions, high winds, extreme cold, a serial derecho and some tornadoes.
The storm allowed frigid air bottled up in much of western Canada and Alaska to flow south and overspread the United States, with sub-zero (°F) highs in the northern Plains.
[2] The Vancouver and Victoria areas normally get far more rain than snow, even during the winter months, due to the warm flow coming from the Pacific Ocean.
The snowstorm occurred because of another huge low-pressure system, but this time, colliding with an Arctic ridge resulted in extremely heavy snow and causing overnight temperatures to dip to well below seasonal values; −12 °C (10 °F) on the 28th and −11.6 °C (11.1 °F) on the 29th.
Drier air began to influence the coast with sunny breaks and isolated flurries beginning on the evening of the 27th and ending on the morning of the 29th.
Up to a foot (30 cm) of snow with blizzard conditions and even some freezing rain at times fell across the Plains and Midwest as far south as Texas through the 30th, bringing the first significant snowfall of the season to some areas.
The storm continued to press northeastward late in the day on November 30, producing heavy snow and ice across most of Kansas and Missouri.
On Sunday, December 3, over 300,000 customers were still without power through the weekend, prompting the Army National Guard to come in and provide aid.
Meanwhile, the city of Chicago only saw 6.2 inches (16 cm) of snow, thanks to warm air on the back side of the low which produced more of a slushy mixture and less snowfall.
Blowing and drifting snow, in addition to below-freezing temperatures caused roads to continue to be hazardous for travel through the weekend.
[7][8][9] This area was also hard-hit by the 1998 Ice Storm which caused over 1 million homes to lose power (some of them for up to one month) while transmission towers and hydro poles were destroyed.
On the morning of December 1, while heavy snow was battering the Midwest, large sections of the Northeastern United States saw temperatures in the 60–75 °F (16–24 °C) range.
Sure enough, heavy rain, strong winds, hail, and vivid lightning pelted the area, in addition to several tornadoes.
Across Upstate New York, damaging thunderstorms resulted from an unprecedented temperature gradient and unusually strong jet stream winds over the area.
Additionally, large sections of the southeast saw severe thunderstorms, including a bow echo that hit parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia on November 30.