Coldest air of the season, snow to hit parts of the Northeast
ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Before temperatures get warmer in the East next week, brutal cold is expected this weekend — the coldest of the season, so far, for parts of the Northeast.
Some of the coldest areas will also see accumulating snow to usher in the arctic blast.
On Friday morning, a quick snow shower will move through Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, blanketing the states in a dusting to 2 inches of snow.
Friday afternoon, snow will fall from eastern Kentucky through western Pennsylvania.
On Friday evening, scattered snow will be across Appalachia, from the Smoky Mountains to upstate New York. Up to 2 inches of snow is possible for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
On Saturday, snow will fall over New England — mainly for all areas north of New York City — though some flurries or light snow may reach the city, leading to a dusting to an inch of snow there. Boston could see an inch or two of snow.
Higher snow totals are expected in New England, where 2 to 4 inches are possible for the eastern I-90 corridor, including Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Erie to near Cleveland.
This low to moderate impact winter storm will usher in another cold blast along with very windy conditions leading to brutal wind chills across the region.
These same areas seeing the most snow will also be under strong wind gusts, with wind chills plummeting to 30 below zero. An extreme cold watch is in place from Friday night through Sunday morning.
In parts of northeastern New York, such as Lake Placid and Saranac Lake, wind chills could drop to -35 degrees, which would cause frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 10 minutes.
High temperatures in New York City will only reach the 20s on Saturday and the teens on Sunday. The lows will drop into the single digits for Sunday morning. Wind chills during the daytime this weekend will be mainly at or below zero due to gusts up to 50 mph on Saturday and gusts up to 30 mph on Sunday. Sunday morning wind chills could reach -15 in the city.
Boston and Buffalo, New York, could feel like the negative teens on Sunday morning and the negative single digits on Monday morning.
Next week, a slow pattern change is expected, with average to even above average temperatures possible for the East by the middle and end of next week. It will still be chilly, but given the brutal cold we have all been enduring, it might feel downright balmy.
(NEW YORK) — After a New Year’s Day filled with heavy rain and flash flooding, more rain is heading to drenched California.
On Thursday, the rain was focused on Southern California.
The heavy rain soaked the Rose Parade in Pasadena for the first time in 20 years, canceling the on-field pregame show. More than 2 inches of rain was recorded in San Diego, prompting flash flooding and some water rescues.
The next round of rain moves in Friday evening, concentrating on the northern half of the California coast and western Washington and Oregon.
By Saturday morning, most of the West Coast, except for Southern California, will be getting scattered rain and mountain snow. Some pockets of rain could be heavy enough to cause flash flooding in northern and central California. The rain will reach Southern California by Saturday afternoon.
Saturday night into Sunday morning, the rain and mountain snow will be focused on central and northern California up to through the Pacific Northwest.
Through Monday, rain totals of 2 to 4 inches are expected from western Washington to central California, while Southern California will see about 1 to 2 inches of rain.
Wind advisories are in effect in parts of northern and central California, including San Francisco, where gusts could reach 50 mph this weekend.
The Sierra Nevada mountains are under a winter storm warning, with 55 mph winds and 1 to 4 feet of snow expected.
Meanwhile, the lake effect snow machine continues to churn in the east.
In Buffalo, New York, the airport has already recorded 8 inches of snow this week, while Syracuse, New York, has seen more than 2 feet of snow.
That lake effect snow will continue through Saturday morning.
Syracuse is under a lake effect snow warning, with 2 to 5 inches total expected in the city and 6 to 12 inches of heavy lake effect snow expected north of Interstate 90.
Then Saturday night into early Sunday morning, a quick clipper system will slide down the Great Lakes and across the Northeast, bringing a light burst of snow to much of the region, but accumulation isn’t expected.
The first full Moon of the spring on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — It’s been 100 years since the 1st modern rocket launched. Humans are heading back to the moon
The experiment lasted only two and a half seconds, but it ignited a century of space exploration that sent humans to low Earth orbit and eventually to the moon.
On March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on a snowy farm in Massachusetts. Historians say that Goddard’s 10-foot rocket would pave the way for the modern machines that do everything from putting satellites in orbit to sending humans to the International Space Station and beyond.
“His unlocking of that ability to use liquid fuel really just sets the stage for any other country around the world that is launching rockets,” Ed Stewart, a curator at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, told ABC News. “It all comes back down to March 16 in 1926 because he was the one that proved that it could be done and then actually did it.” The rocket was the first of its kind, powered by liquid propellant rather than gunpowder or other solid fuels used by most rockets at the time, according to NASA. The rocket flew for less than three seconds and reached an altitude of about 41 feet.
While scientists overseas had already been experimenting with rocketry in places like Russia and Germany, according to historical documents, it was Goddard’s 1919 paper, “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,” that made the physicist’s discovery famous worldwide, explained Stewart.
“It caught the attention of people all around the world, even people that were doing some experimentation with rockets and liquid fuels and things like that in other parts of the world,” Stewart said.
The paper suggested that rockets could one day travel to the moon and caught the attention of the Smithsonian Institution, which invested money in rocket research.
“I think the breakthrough was, first of all, that Goddard had this dream of getting a rocket ship off the surface of the Earth,” said Charles “Chuck” Agosta, a physics professor at Goddard’s alma mater, Clark University. “And then, of course, the dream was to go to Mars.”
Other scientists, like Hermann Oberth of Germany, later built on Goddard’s theory, and that progress eventually contributed to the development of the V-2 rocket, Stewart noted. And eventually, rockets based on Goddard’s pioneering work led to sending astronauts into space and to the moon.
Goddard earned his master’s and doctorate in physics at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, before returning to teach at the school in 1914. He eventually served as director of the physics department for two decades.
Today, faculty at Clark say his legacy still looms large on campus.
Goddard once used a bicycle wheel to show funding agencies how gyroscopes could help steer rockets in space. Today, Agosta uses that same wheel to teach his students about angular momentum.
Despite his legacy, Goddard’s breakthrough didn’t immediately capture the public’s imagination. Stewart says that when the first liquid-fueled rocket launched, space travel was still widely viewed as science fiction by many.
“I do think that at the time it was still so far-fetched that even once he proved that the basic version of the technology would work, people still were thinking of it more as a novelty,” Stewart said.
Much of what we know about those early experiments comes from Goddard’s wife, Esther Christine Kisk Goddard, a photographer from Worcester, Mass. She documented many of the tests, leaving behind footage that offers a window into the creation of the world’s first modern rockets.
According to NASA, Goddard created and launched more than 35 rockets throughout his lifetime. It was because of his pioneering work in modern rocketry that, in May 1959, NASA renamed its first spaceflight complex to the “Goddard Space Flight Center.”
The center is home to missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch as early as fall 2026.
The global return to the moon and beyond
During his initial launch tests, Goddard fueled his rocket with gasoline and liquid oxygen, according to the Roswell Museum in New Mexico, where the physicist spent part of his career. Today’s modern rockets no longer use gasoline, opting for other fuels such as liquid hydrogen, liquid methane and refined kerosene along with liquid oxygen, which acts as an oxidizer.
On the 100th anniversary of Goddard’s discovery, the United States is on the cusp of sending the first astronauts to the moon since 1972 as part of the Artemis II mission. The 10-day trip will send four astronauts around the far side of the moon in NASA’s Orion spacecraft, launched into orbit by the most powerful rocket ever to send people into space. A rocket that may never have come to fruition had Goddard not experimented on that faithful day in 1926.
What could the next 100 years of rocket technology bring?
“I’m pretty confident that in a hundred years, we’re going to be all over space,” Agosta said.
Considering the thousands of airplanes in our own skies every day, he says it’s “inevitable” and that we’ll “at least be in the planets close to us” by the next century.
American travelers in the Middle East like Shekinah Lee are speaking out. Lee spoke with ABC News via video. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — American travelers are sharing their stories of being stranded in the Middle East after the joint U.S.-Israel attack against Iran triggered retaliatory strikes, impacting at least 11 countries in the region.
President Donald Trump announced “major combat operations” against Iran on Saturday, with strikes targeting military and government sites. Iran has since responded with missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, regional U.S. bases in Gulf nations and American diplomatic facilities.
Shekinah Lee, who lives in Chicago, told ABC News she and her boyfriend had been traveling in the United Arab Emirates and are now trying to return home.
“I’m anxious, I’m scared, and I’m desperate to get home,” Lee said Tuesday morning.
According to Lee, she hasn’t been able to get any answers from her airline about flights back to the U.S.
“We’re not getting any support from our airline. We’ve been trying to get in contact with them but due to the volume of the situation, they’re not able to field calls, so none of our questions are getting answered,” Lee said.
In a statement Tuesday on social media, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said the agency is in touch with thousands of Americans abroad and working to secure flights to help.
“Yes, the State Department is actively securing military aircraft and charter flights for American citizens who wish to leave the Middle East,” Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, wrote on X in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ve been in direct contact with nearly 3,000 Americans abroad. American citizens should call [the State Department] for assistance with departure options.”
The State Department also issued instructions for travelers abroad on its own social media account Monday, urging Americans to contact the State Department.
While Lee and her boyfriend wait for a flight out of Dubai, she said they had to stay overnight in their hotel parking garage until they could find further accommodation.
“The parking garage was packed with families from all over the world, just desperate to know what’s going on,” Lee said. “Right now, our priority is getting a flight out of here.”
American citizen Alyssa Ramos is using social media to document her struggles returning to the U.S. Ramos shared on Instagram that she and a group of friends paid $1,200 for a nearly eight-hour journey over the land border from Kuwait City to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
On Tuesday, Ramos said in an Instagram story that her plane from Riyadh never left the airport.
“I’ve never been more happy and also more scared to be on a plane,” Ramos wrote in part. “There were attacks here in Riyadh earlier today and they usually strike more at night … please keep sending your positive energy and protective thoughts.”
The State Department is urging Americans to exercise caution worldwide “following the launch of U.S. combat operations in Iran.”
“Americans worldwide and especially in the Middle East should follow the guidance in the latest security alerts issued by the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate. They may experience travel disruptions due to periodic airspace closures,” the department advised.
For the United Arab Emirates, the State Department has set a level 3 travel advisory, ordered the “departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel and family members of government personnel on March 2,” and is advising Americans to reconsider travel to the country “due to the threat of armed conflict and terrorism.”
The State Department has similar warnings for Americans in at least five other Middle Eastern countries.
In Beirut, Lebanon, drone strikes have been continuing in the capital city, according to Samer Bawab, an American citizen living in the city.
“I haven’t been able to sleep very well within the last three days, only a few hours per night,” Bawab told ABC News. “That’s because we’re getting awoken in the middle of the night sometimes by loud explosions and being caught off guard.”
Former Team USA basketball player Destiny Littleton said in an interview that aired Monday on “Good Morning America” that she is in Israel where she plays professionally.
Littleton said she could “hear the interceptor missiles … blow up the missiles coming towards us and that was very scary,” adding, “We’re in survival mode.”
American Kristy Ellmer told ABC News that she and her partner Matt Carwell were in Dubai on vacation when the strikes against Iran began. She said they’re uncertain when they will be able to return home to New Hampshire.
“It was definitely very destabilizing … you could actually feel it and you could hear it,” Ellmer said of the explosions.
The State Department recommends Americans check each country’s Travel Information Page for developing details and entry requirements and enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, or STEP, for safety updates and information on how to get help in an emergency.
