Parked cars and trees are covered in snow during a blizzard on February 23, 2026 in the Flatbush neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Showers and thunderstorms are expected to move through the Southeast on Thursday while a wintry mix is possible around Washington, D.C. and Baltimore in the evening.
However, given temperatures are hovering around freezing, there could be snow mixing in with the rain but likely with no accumulation.
On Friday, the snow will move into Montana from Canada and, on Saturday, more snow will be in a band from Montana to South Dakota to Iowa and into northern Illinois where 1 to 4 inches of snow will be possible.
Chicago could get snow on Saturday in the afternoon until the late evening with an inch of two possible in the region as snow becomes widespread across northern Indiana, much of central and northern Ohio and southern Michigan.
On Sunday morning, more snow will push through the Northeast but is expected to end midday or in the afternoon as accumulation totals could be up to 2 inches in some areas along the coast.
Meanwhile next week, snow could form over the Midwest from Iowa and Missouri through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, before reaching the mid-Atlantic midday or in the afternoon on Monday.
There is also a chance for snow across the mid-Atlantic Monday with Washington D.C. and Baltimore possibly seeing a few inches of accumulating snow.
Another system on Tuesday night and Wednesday could bring rain and snow to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, depending on temperatures.
NASA’s Artemis II mission astronauts commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen appear at a press conference on April 16, 2026. (NASA)
(HOUSTON, Texas) — Less than a week after returning from their historic 10-day, 694,481-mile journey to the moon and back, the Artemis II crew answered questions on Thursday about their successful mission.
During a news conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, home of the Mission Control Center, the three NASA astronauts and one Canadian Space Agency astronaut spoke fondly of their time aboard the Orion spacecraft, Integrity, and recalled how they came together as a crew during the first mission to the moon in more than 50 years.
Reid Wiseman, who served as the Artemis II commander, said, “What an amazing journey that was. First and foremost, Victor, Christina, Jeremy, just thank you. This was an unbelievable adventure, and it was made possible by this crew and the support of each other throughout the whole thing.”
He added, “We are bonded forever. I mean, that’s the closest four humans can be and not be a family.”
“I am here to tell the world: we launched as friends, and we came back as best friends,” he added.
When asked by ABC13 reporter Nick Natario whether the gravity of what they’ve accomplished has hit them and how it may have changed them, the crew said they were focused on completing the mission.
Victor Glover, the pilot for the mission, added, “We did what we said we were going to do, and now we’ve got to step out and just face that reality.”
Christina Koch, one of the flight’s mission specialists, said, “When my husband looked me in the eye on that video call and said, ‘No, really, you’ve made a difference.’ It brought tears to my eyes, and I said, that’s all we ever wanted.”
She added, “When we come before you now, we’ve done this together. We took your hearts with us and your hearts lifted our hearts.”
Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian to travel into deep space, said, “I found it really refreshing to find out how people have followed the mission and been creative with the mission and there’s lots of funny stuff online. And that really resonates with me a lot, and it just reinforces something I already knew, but humans are just great people in general. We don’t always do great things. We’re not always in our integrity, but our default is to be good and to be good to one another.”
When asked if the experience of traveling to deep space created a “sense of universal connectedness,” Wiseman said, “I turned to Victor, and I said, I don’t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we’re looking at right now, because it was other worldly and it was amazing.”
In terms of their sleep about Orion, Koch said that “space sleep is the best sleep ever,” and now that she’s back on Earth, she said, unlike after her International Space Station mission, this time, “every time I’ve been waking up or in the first few days, I thought I was floating. I truly thought I was floating and I had to convince myself I wasn’t.”
Wiseman complimented the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System and said it’s ready for the Artemis III mission, scheduled for 2027.
“My own personal opinion, they could put the Artemis III Orion on the Space Launch System tomorrow and launch it, and the crew would be in great shape,” said Wiseman. “This vehicle really handled very well.”
When asked what they brought with them on the trip, Wiseman said he took some notes from friends, some great quotes and a bracelet that his daughter had made for him a few years prior.
The crew was asked what advice they would give to younger people “who are looking skywards.”
Wiseman said one thing that he thinks society has lost is the pursuit of challenging goals.
“You have to go do really hard, really challenging things and you have to go move the needle,” said Wiseman. “We have to get our hands out there and engaged. Our hands and our minds have got to be engaged.”
Glover encouraged young people to “really get comfortable asking questions and then listening to their peers, but also their mentors. I think that’s been a game-changer for all of us.”
Koch added that people should “find your fulfillment,” “do what scares you,” and “support those around you.”
Hansen said people should “just follow the example that people saw here, don’t do it alone, and share what you’re trying to accomplish with others, because you need the support of others to do big things, and so share your goals. Be brave enough to share them.”
With the next Artemis mission scheduled for as early as next year, the crew discussed their contributions to what comes next for NASA and its pursuit of a moon base.
“We were very much lifted up by the notion that we would get to contribute to astronauts doing this all over again, much sooner than we thought that we were going to be focused on the moon base, on surface operations,” said Koch. “And I would say, if nothing else, we are feeling even more excited and just ready to take that on as an agency.”
Wiseman added that “if we had a first flight lander on board that thing, I know at least three of my crewmates would have been in it, trying to land on the moon.”
“We have to be willing to accept a little more risk than we were willing to accept in the past, and to just trust that we will figure it out in real time. We’re not going to be able to pound everything flat before we go. We’re going to have to trust each other and crews and Mission Control to work through real problems,” Hansen added.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge is allowing the release of deposition videos of two former DOGE staffers, ruling that the risk of “embarrassment and reputational harm” is not enough to overcome the public interest in the videos.
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on Monday lifted an earlier order requiring a group of nonprofits to remove the videos from the internet after lawyers with the Justice Department argued that the former Department of Government Efficiency staffers faced threats because of the depositions’ release.
While Judge McMahon acknowledged that the former staffers faced threats, she said the DOJ could not prove a “particularized harm” to the former staffers that would overcome the public interest in their official conduct as government employees.
“Here, the testimony in the videos concerns the conduct of public officials acting in their official capacities — a context in which the public interest in transparency and accountability is at its apex,” she wrote.
Judge McMahon concluded that ordering the videos removed would have little impact on the alleged threats because the videos had been already shared hundreds of thousands of times online.
The DOJ, she said, failed to prove that ordering the removal of the videos “would materially reduce the alleged risk of harm or embarrassment.”
“The videos have already been widely disseminated across multiple platforms, including YouTube, X, TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit, where they have been shared, reposted, and viewed by at least hundreds of thousands of users, resulting in near-instantaneous and effectively permanent global distribution,” she said.
“This is a predictable consequence of dissemination in the modern digital environment, where content can be copied, redistributed, and indefinitely preserved beyond the control of any single actor,” wrote the judge.
“This decision validates our position that the publication of the videos, which document a process to destroy knowledge and access to vital public programs, was indeed in the public’s interest,” said Joy Connolly, president of the American Council of Learned Societies, one of the nonprofits that released the videos. “We look forward to continuing the pursuit of justice in reclaiming government support for important humanities research, education, and sustainability initiatives.”
The videos were initially released as part of an ongoing civil lawsuit related to the funding cuts carried out by DOGE as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to trim the size of the federal government. In the videos, two former DOGE staffer. — Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh — were questioned about their push to cut more than $100 million in humanities grants, and acknowledged they used DEI keywords and ChatGPT to identify grants to eliminate.
“You don’t regret that people might have lost important income … to support their lives?” an attorney asked one of the staffers about the grant cancellations.
“No. I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero,” the staffer said.
“Did you reduce the federal deficit?” the attorney asked.
Ice chunks float in the Hudson River in front of the skyline of midtown Manhattan and the Empire State Building in New York City as seen from Hoboken, New Jersey, Jan. 26, 2026. (Gary Hershorn/ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — A potential blizzard is headed to the Southeast this weekend, impacting the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee.
The storm will begin Fridayevening with snow over Appalachia, along the Tennessee/North Carolina border and western Virginia.
On Saturday, the snow is forecast to spread east into eastern Georgia and much of South Carolina, North Carolina and southern Virginia.
The storm could bring powerful winds, which may lead to blizzard conditions. Visibility could be reduced to less than a quarter-mile.
While it is still too early to predict exact snow totals, it appears that much of northern South Carolina, nearly all of North Carolina and southern Virginia will get 3 to 8 inches of snow between Friday night and Sunday morning. Some areas could even near 1 foot of snow, especially along the North Carolina coast where the heavy snow may last longer.
Along with a full moon causing naturally higher tides, large waves produced by the storm may lead to destructive beach erosion and coastal flooding, with 2 to 4 feet water inundation possible from the South Carolina coast to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the coasts of Virginia and Maryland.
The Northeast coast may escape this storm mostly unscathed.
Those along the Interstate 95 corridor from Washington, D.C. to New York City should see little to no snow accumulation, but they will see gusty winds up to 40 mph on Sunday morning.
A few inches of snow is possible on the coasts of Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey, as well as New York’s Long Island and Massachusetts’ Cape Cod.
But if the storm moves slightly west, 3 to 6 inches of snow and blizzard conditions could strike the I-95 corridor from Connecticut to Boston to Maine.
On Friday, the the wind chill — what temperature it feels like — is forecast to hit minus 13 degrees in Minneapolis. On Saturday, the wind chill is forecast to drop to 2 degrees in Atlanta and minus 1 in New York City.
That cold is also spreading south to Florida.Record lows are possible across the Sunshine State on Sunday, including 20 degrees in Tallahassee, 23 degrees in Jacksonville and 25 in Orlando.
