CHICAGO: A massive winter storm today snarled holiday travel across the central United States as freezing rain and heavy snow caused traffic chaos and threatened to ground more flights. “There’s just a humongous storm moving across the center of the country, basically from the Canadian border to Texas and spreading from west Colorado to Illinois,” said a National Weather Service (NWS) spokesman. “Christmas travel is going to be very difficult,” he added. The northern parts of the storm were expected to drop up to two feet of snow while flood warnings were issued further south. A powerful tornado late last night on the storm’s southern flank slammed the town of Longview in eastern Texas, ripping the roof off a house and toppling trees. More than 260 flights were cancelled at Chicago airports yesterday due to icy conditions and heavy, wet snow and sleet. Train service was also interrupted for three hours at New York’s Penn Station due to a power outage that disrupted travel from Washington to Niagara Falls on the Canadian border. A NWS winter storm warning issued early today for South Dakota, and echoed in alerts for neighbouring states, said the event was a “life threatening system.” It warned that “any travel from last night into Friday night will be treacherous.”