Winter Storm Chan Recap: First Heavy Snow Of Season For Parts of Northeast

Black Ice Blindsides Oklahoma City Drivers

A winter storm, named Winter Storm Chan by The Weather Channel, gave parts of the Northeast its first heavy snow of the season after it blanketed snow-fatigued parts of the Midwest in the days after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Plains, Midwest Mess

After wringing out snow in the high country of Colorado and northern New Mexico, Chan's wintry stripe spread out into the Plains as December 2025 kicked off.

Most areas of the Plains and Midwest from Kansas and Nebraska to the Ohio Valley picked up anywhere from 1 to 5 inches of snow. That included the Kansas City, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland metro areas. Slippery roads and jammed up traffic were reported in some of these metro areas.

A few locations in eastern Indiana and western Ohio measured 6 to 7 inches of total snowfall in heavier snowbands.

For some of these areas, Chan was the second dumping of snow in just three days after Winter Storm Bellamy was among the heaviest November snowstorms on record in parts of the Midwest over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Northeast Impacts

The snow, and rain for some, then spread into the Northeast on December 2, but quickly exited by December 3.

The heaviest snow — generally 6 to 12 inches — fell in a swath from Pennsylvania's Poconos to the Hudson Valley well north of New York City, southern Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. In some of these locations, such as Concord, New Hampshire, and Portland, Maine, it was their first measurable snowfall of the season, about a week later than average.

Lighter amounts, generally less than 6 inches, fell in the northern and western outer suburbs of Boston, northern Connecticut, far northern New Jersey, central New York and most of Pennsylvania except the southeast part, including Pittsburgh.

Mainly rain fell along the immediate Interstate 95 corridor from downtown Boston to New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

However, the impacts from this beyond snow were minimal. Peak wind gusts were only 40 to 45 mph in far southeast Massachusetts, including Cape Cod, while a 53 mph gust was clocked on Nantucket Island.

(MORE: Why Northeast Winter Storms Are Hard To Forecast)

A Little Icing On The Cake

This storm didn't bring only snow.

Sleet and freezing rain impacted parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, western Tennessee and also stretched from the southern Appalachians to just west of Boston.

While the majority of the totals were under a tenth of an inch, leading to a few slippery roads and icing of trees and elevated surfaces, some parts of West Virginia and Virginia had up to about a quarter inch of ice accumulate.

Icy overpasses and bridges were reported in Oklahoma City, which made the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend commute dangerous.

Tiffany Savona is a meteorologist for weather.com with more than 15 years of experience in forecasting the weather across the country.

Miriam Guthrie graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with an undergraduate degree in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and is now a meteorology intern with weather.com while working toward her master’s degree.