States braced for more whiteout conditions in the coming days as a lake-effect storm dropped several feet of snow in parts of the region by the early weekend.

The first big snowfall of the season blanketed towns along Lake Erie on Saturday in the middle of the hectic holiday travel and shopping weekend, and numbing cold and heavy snow were forecast to persist into next week and cause hazards in the Great Lakes,

A brutally cold air mass from Siberia will meet the record warm Great Lakes later this week. That’s a recipe for meteorological fireworks — and lots of snow.

Lake-effect snow generated by the Great Lakes is among the heaviest snowfall in the world. The ingredients are straightforward and come together a number of times each fall and winter. Cold air from Canada pours over the still unfrozen, relatively warm Great Lakes, the world's largest group of freshwater lakes.