6 Dead, Thousands Stranded in Storm

Nasty holiday weather that brought tornadoes to the South and blizzards across the nation's middle is now headed for the Northeast, reports AccuWeather.com. It's not going to be a pretty travel day, whether on the ground or in the air.

• 6 deaths: Winds brought down a tree on pickup truck near Houston, killing the driver; a tree fell on a home in Louisiana, killing the 53-year-old male homeowner. Two passengers died in a head-on collision in Arkansas and two more were killed on Oklahoma highways, reports the AP. Incredibly, no injuries were reported in a 21-car pileup in Oklahoma City, NewsOK reports.

• "Snow was expected across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, with northern Ohio, northern Pennsylvania, and southern New York set to bear the brunt," reports NBC News
• "Severe thunderstorms were forecast for the Carolinas, while a line of blizzard and winter storm warnings stretched from Arkansas up the Ohio River to New York and all the way to Maine," reports the AP.
• Air travel: 1,311 flights have been canceled and 5,613 were delayed, according to FlightAware.com.
• Tornadoes: More than 30 possible tornadoes were reported in the Deep South yesterday, reports ABC News, with Mobile, Alabama, the biggest city to get hit. No fatalities were directly linked to the tornadoes.
• No power: Estimates of those in the dark range up to nearly 300,000, with Little Rock, Arkansas, especially hard hit.

(More Mobile, Alabama stories.)