What You Need to Know About the Giant Snowstorm Hitting the U.S.

Happy New Year! Are you ready for the year's first major snowstorm? Good! Because blizzard-like conditions are expected to hit the Midwest and Northeast tonight and Friday morning, affecting as many 100 million people. The storm hits in a few hours. In the Northeast, it's expected to start Thursday evening and continue through Friday morning, just in time to ruin the Friday morning commute. And it's been snowing heavily in parts of the Midwest, including Chicago, since New Year's Eve. Expect at least six inches of snow—and probably more. New York City will get between six and nine inches of snow, most of it falling Thursday night into Friday morning. And there's a blizzard warning starting at 6 p.m. in Long Island, where meteorologists are expecting snow accumulation of one inch per hour and winds of up to 45 mph.

Boston and most of Massachusetts are expected to receive expected to receive 10 to 14 inches of snow with some minor flooding. Buffalo will likely get 12 to 18 inches, and Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire will probably get 9 to 12 inches.

With more than a foot of snow since New Year's Eve, Chicago has likely seen the worst of the storm, though they're expected to receive another several inches Thursday night and Friday morning. It's going to be cold. And it will be cold. Temperatures could drop into the single digits in New York City, below -3 degrees in Boston, to 15 to 25 below zero in upstate New York, and as low as -20 in Connecticut. But that's nothing compared to Manitoba, where temperatures could drop to -31 Celsius, making it two degrees colder than Mars. The storm is not called "Hercules." The Weather Channel has christened it Hercules, but that's a fake name that you should avoid using, as we explained last year.