(NEW YORK) — A cross-country storm continued on Monday to produce heavy snow and strong winds in the upper Midwest and Great Lakes region, including an ice storm in northern Michigan, prompting thousands of flight cancellations and delays.

More than 3,400 flights within or out of the United States have already been canceled on Monday and more than 14,000 flights have been delayed, according to FlightAware.com, which tracks flights throughout the nation.

Between Saturday and Monday morning, more than 5,000 flights were canceled nationwide due to weather, with 3,000 flights scrapped on Sunday alone.

A major winter storm sweeping across the country has produced blizzards, ice storms and widespread destruction across parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes states.

Overnight, parts of Wisconsin recorded more than 2 feet of snow, including the city of Wausau, which received 23.4 inches of snow on Sunday and was adding to its snow totals on Monday morning.

Blizzard conditions are still occurring in parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota, where the city of Minneapolis recorded 8.8 inches of snow overnight and into Monday.

Meanwhile, more than 391 reports of damaging winds have been recorded from Texas to Ohio. At least eight states — including Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and New York — have reported destructive wind gusts of 70 mph.

More than 500,000 utility customers from Texas to New York were without power on Monday morning, according to the website PowerOutage.com.

Most of the power outages are in northern Michigan, where an ongoing ice storms have toppled power lines.

Fire and ice

The March storm is also forecast to continue whipping up dry and windy conditions in the South, fueling a critical fire threat in areas of the central U.S. already dealing with wildfires.

In Nebraska, three wildfires, the largest being the Morrill Fire, have burned more than 700,000 acres of land across multiple counties in western Nebraska and killed at least one person in Arthur County, Gov. Jim Pillen said at a news conference on Saturday.

On Monday, red flag warnings for fire weather danger are in place from southern Texas through southern Louisiana, including the cities of Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi.

Severe weather outlook for Monday

On Monday, a moderate risks of severe storms is forecast to spread into South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and up to Maryland, including the cities of Washington, D.C., Richmond and Raleigh.

Severe storms are also expected to develop from Georgia to Pennsylvania, including the cities of Savannah, Charleston, Charlotte, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Destructive winds gusts greater than 70 mph could develop in these areas, especially from South Carolina to Maryland.

There’s also a risk of tornadoes popping up about midday from South Carolina to Maryland.

A line of severe thunderstorm could also spawn tornadoes from the Florida Panhandle to the West Virginia. A tornado watch was in place earlier for Florida, Alabama and Georgia.

A tornado watch is also in place for Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and much of New Jersey until 7 pm ET on Monday.

More snow in store for the East Coast

By 6 p.m. ET, snow is expected to be falling from western Virginia, West Virginia, eastern Pennsylvania and western New York. Showers and thunderstorms are also forecast to move along the East Coast from North Carolina to Maine.

The weather system is expected to move out late Monday afternoon. But lake-effect snow is expected to continue through Tuesday on the eastern side of the Great Lakes.

Snow could also make a brief appearance from the Dakotas to Ohio on Tuesday and into Tuesday night.

Record heat wave in the West

Record heat is expected to continue as a summer-like heat dome settles over the West.

Many cities throughout the West — Sacramento, San Jose, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver — could reach all-time high temperatures for March.

Extreme heat alerts have been issued from southern Arizona up to the Bay Area of Northern California, where temperatures could reach the mid-90s.

Part of Southern California could see temperatures climb to 109 degrees.

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(NEW YORK) — It’s been 100 years since the 1st modern rocket launched. Humans are heading back to the moon

The experiment lasted only two and a half seconds, but it ignited a century of space exploration that sent humans to low Earth orbit and eventually to the moon.

On March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on a snowy farm in Massachusetts. Historians say that Goddard’s 10-foot rocket would pave the way for the modern machines that do everything from putting satellites in orbit to sending humans to the International Space Station and beyond.

“His unlocking of that ability to use liquid fuel really just sets the stage for any other country around the world that is launching rockets,” Ed Stewart, a curator at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, told ABC News. “It all comes back down to March 16 in 1926 because he was the one that proved that it could be done and then actually did it.”
The rocket was the first of its kind, powered by liquid propellant rather than gunpowder or other solid fuels used by most rockets at the time, according to NASA. The rocket flew for less than three seconds and reached an altitude of about 41 feet.

While scientists overseas had already been experimenting with rocketry in places like Russia and Germany, according to historical documents, it was Goddard’s 1919 paper, “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,” that made the physicist’s discovery famous worldwide, explained Stewart.

“It caught the attention of people all around the world, even people that were doing some experimentation with rockets and liquid fuels and things like that in other parts of the world,” Stewart said.

The paper suggested that rockets could one day travel to the moon and caught the attention of the Smithsonian Institution, which invested money in rocket research.

“I think the breakthrough was, first of all, that Goddard had this dream of getting a rocket ship off the surface of the Earth,” said Charles “Chuck” Agosta, a physics professor at Goddard’s alma mater, Clark University. “And then, of course, the dream was to go to Mars.”

Other scientists, like Hermann Oberth of Germany, later built on Goddard’s theory, and that progress eventually contributed to the development of the V-2 rocket, Stewart noted. And eventually, rockets based on Goddard’s pioneering work led to sending astronauts into space and to the moon.

Goddard earned his master’s and doctorate in physics at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, before returning to teach at the school in 1914. He eventually served as director of the physics department for two decades.

Today, faculty at Clark say his legacy still looms large on campus.

Goddard once used a bicycle wheel to show funding agencies how gyroscopes could help steer rockets in space. Today, Agosta uses that same wheel to teach his students about angular momentum.

Despite his legacy, Goddard’s breakthrough didn’t immediately capture the public’s imagination. Stewart says that when the first liquid-fueled rocket launched, space travel was still widely viewed as science fiction by many.

“I do think that at the time it was still so far-fetched that even once he proved that the basic version of the technology would work, people still were thinking of it more as a novelty,” Stewart said.

Much of what we know about those early experiments comes from Goddard’s wife, Esther Christine Kisk Goddard, a photographer from Worcester, Mass. She documented many of the tests, leaving behind footage that offers a window into the creation of the world’s first modern rockets.

According to NASA, Goddard created and launched more than 35 rockets throughout his lifetime. It was because of his pioneering work in modern rocketry that, in May 1959, NASA renamed its first spaceflight complex to the “Goddard Space Flight Center.”

The center is home to missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch as early as fall 2026.

The global return to the moon and beyond

During his initial launch tests, Goddard fueled his rocket with gasoline and liquid oxygen, according to the Roswell Museum in New Mexico, where the physicist spent part of his career. Today’s modern rockets no longer use gasoline, opting for other fuels such as liquid hydrogen, liquid methane and refined kerosene along with liquid oxygen, which acts as an oxidizer.

On the 100th anniversary of Goddard’s discovery, the United States is on the cusp of sending the first astronauts to the moon since 1972 as part of the Artemis II mission. The 10-day trip will send four astronauts around the far side of the moon in NASA’s Orion spacecraft, launched into orbit by the most powerful rocket ever to send people into space. A rocket that may never have come to fruition had Goddard not experimented on that faithful day in 1926.

What could the next 100 years of rocket technology bring?

“I’m pretty confident that in a hundred years, we’re going to be all over space,” Agosta said.

Considering the thousands of airplanes in our own skies every day, he says it’s “inevitable” and that we’ll “at least be in the planets close to us” by the next century.

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(NEW YORK) — Several developments came out of Washington, D.C., regarding the war with Iran over the weekend as strikes continue across the Middle East and economic impacts are beginning to be felt domestically.  

President Donald Trump and administration officials continued to comment on the timeline of the war, the possibility of a deal with Iran, securing the Strait of Hormuz and the release of oil reserves.

The administration has maintained that the U.S. is decimating Iranian forces and degrading their capabilities, but Iran continues to strike.

On Saturday, Trump said on social media, “We have already destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability,” and said the U.S. “will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE.”

Still, the administration has yet to comment on the deployment of Marines to the region, which was announced on Friday, and what their mission could entail.

Trump also faced backlash over the weekend after an affiliated political action committee sent a fundraising email, featuring a photo from the dignified transfer of the first six U.S. service members killed in the Iran war, while offering contributors access to “private national security briefings.”

ABC News has compiled a list of some of the latest developments as the war stretches into its third week.

Timeline

Questions continue to swirl about how long Trump wants the United States to be engaged in this war.

He spent the bulk of last week assuring Americans it would be over soon, hoping to ease market concerns, saying Iran is beaten. But on his way out of Washington Friday night, he refused to comment on how long it would continue. “As long as necessary,” Trump said.

On Sunday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, “I think that this conflict will certainly come to an end in the next few weeks. Could be sooner than that, but the conflict will come to the end in the next few weeks.”

In an interview with NBC, Wright also acknowledged, “Americans are feeling it [economic pain] right now and will feel it for a few more weeks.” But, he said, in the end, we will have removed the greatest threat to global energy supplies.

Securing the Strait

Officials, including Wright, also struggled over the weekend to explain the plans they had executed in anticipation that Iran would shut down the vital oil shipping lane in the Strait of Hormuz.

On Saturday, Trump called on other countries that depend on that commerce to help secure the strait, naming “China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others.” He also suggested he’s received commitments from some of them, but from whom remains unknown. Democrats, critical of Trump, said last week that this is something that should have been coordinated at the outset.

Later Saturday, President Trump told NBC that he’d secured cooperation. “They’ve not only committed, but they think it’s a great idea,” but he didn’t say which country or countries he was referring to.

And, in that same interview, he said, “We believe we’ll be joined by other countries,” drawing into question whether he actually secured commitments.

ABC News has asked the White House to clarify, and they have not responded.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said of the strait on Friday, “We have been dealing with it, and don’t need to worry about it.”

But, so far, there have been no escorts, and requests from shipping companies have reportedly been denied.  

Pressed on whether Trump has actual commitments from others to help, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said during an interview with CNN, “I’ll leave those conversations to him,” referring to the president.

Wright told ABC News that more work needs to be done before the strait can open and escorts can occur. “Right now, our focus is destroying their military capabilities, including those that are used specifically to threaten the straits. But we need to finish those tasks first, and you will see the straits open again in the not-too-distant future.”

He also did not specify which countries would help.

Trump spoke with the leaders of the U.K. and Canada on Sunday, but there was no mention of any commitment from the foreign leaders.

Trump, meanwhile, has been warning Iran that further disruptions in the strait could result in devastating strikes on the country’s oil infrastructure. He said he’s so far held back during those strikes on Kharg Island, but on Friday warned he would “reconsider” if Iran interfered with the Strait of Hormuz.

On Saturday, he told NBC, “We may hit it a few more times just for fun.”

A deal?

Many experts in Washington believe ultimately, there needs to be another nuclear deal in order for this war to end.

Trump said over the weekend he’s not ready “because the terms aren’t good enough yet.”

“Iran wants to make a deal, and I don’t want to make it because the terms aren’t good enough yet,” Trump reportedly told NBC.

And in a post to his social media platform, he said Iran “wants a deal,” but not one he would accept.

He also raised questions about whether the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is alive or not. On Friday, the State Department announced a $10 million reward for information on key Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders, including Khamenei.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told CBS on Sunday, “We don’t see any reason why we should talk with Americans, because we were talking with them when they decided to attack us, and that was for the second time.”

But, in what some interpret as a more positive diplomatic development, Aragachi said Iran has not yet attempted to retrieve its 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from “underneath the rubble” of those nuclear sites bombed by the U.S. last June.

If, he said, that material is to be recovered, it would be done under the “supervision of the agency,” a reference to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Earlier Saturday, Reuters reported that Trump had rejected efforts from Middle East allies to begin diplomatic ceasefire negotiations. The White House had not responded to ABC’s requests for comment about the report.

“Nothing is on the table right now. Everything depends on the future,” Araghchi said.

Marines deployed

On Friday, Trump ordered 2,200 Marines aboard three U.S. Navy amphibious ships to the Middle East, two officials confirmed to ABC News.

Trump has yet to comment on this decision, and why it’s necessary if the war, in his words, is “won.”

The Marines are part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit, which means that they are capable of conducting land, amphibious and aviation missions.

It also means there are more than just 2,220 Marines headed there. There are between 2,000 and 2,500 Sailors also on board those ships, providing support.

In all, approximately 5,000 Marines and Sailors are headed to the region.

The Pentagon has not acknowledged the deployment and has not offered any guidance on its mission.

Nevertheless, they are already underway and will take a minimum of 10 days to get there.

Backlash to campaign using photo of war dead

Trump drew backlash from his critics over the weekend after it was confirmed an affiliated political action committee sent a new fundraising email featuring an official White House photo from the dignified transfer of the first six U.S. service members killed in the Iran war, while also offering contributors access to “private national security briefings.”

In the photo, Trump can be seen saluting a flag-draped transfer case containing the remains of one of the six fallen soldiers.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN, “If the president is willing to raise campaign funds over the bodies of America’s war dead, he is unfit to be the commander in chief.”

The White House and Never Surrender Inc. have not responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said he “didn’t see” the email. “I didn’t see it. I mean, somebody puts it up. We have a lot of people working for us, but there’s nobody that’s better to the military than me,” Trump said.

The Pentagon identified the six service members killed when a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq on Thursday.

Three of the Air Force airmen were assigned to the 6th Air Refueling Wing, MacDill Air Force Base in Florida: Maj. John A. Klinner, 33, of Auburn, Alabama; Capt. Ariana G. Savino, 31, of Covington, Washington; and Tech. Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt, 34, of Bardstown, Kentucky

The other three airmen were assigned to the 121st Air Refueling Wing at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base in Columbus, Ohio: Capt. Seth R. Koval, 38, of Mooresville, Indiana; Capt. Curtis J. Angst, 30, of Wilmington, Ohio; and Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons, 28, of Columbus, Ohio

The crash, which involved another KC-135 tanker, is still under investigation.

Oil reserves

Oil reserves from emergency stockpiles will start flowing immediately to Asia but won’t be available to the U.S. and Europe until the end of March, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new press release Sunday.

Importantly, the IEA did not specify exactly how much oil would start flowing per day — a metric oil analysts are watching to understand what the immediate impact might be on prices. Oil prices have so far not been tamed by the announcement that countries, including the U.S., are tapping their strategic reserves.

The IEA announced the biggest-ever release of oil from reserves — 400 million barrels — from its 32 member countries last week. That includes 172 million barrels from the U.S.

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