An enormous winter storm left Midwesterners shivering in its frozen footprint and crushed snow-laden buildings in the Northeast, where a combination of ice, snow and rain pushed much of the winter-cursed region to its breaking point.

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 as if in a prairie blizzard. Much of Texas was under a hard freeze warning Wednesday; 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 predictions came true. No one was seriously injured, however. [ MYWAY NEWS ]