Severe winter weather causes travel chaos as planes grounded and over 1,000 flights canceled at Chicago's airports

• Winter storms are battering the US, causing floods, power outages, and travel chaos.
• Thousands of flights have been grounded around Chicago as blizzards hit.

Thousands of flights have been canceled across the US ahead of the holiday weekend as powerful winter storms bring dangerous conditions to large parts of the US.

Chicago's airports have weathered most of the disruption, with almost half of all US cancellations involving two of the city's airports on Friday as blizzard warnings were issued.

At Chicago O'Hare, a ground stop was put in place at around 5:30 a.m. preventing all flights from entering or leaving the airport until at least 8 a.m., NBC Chicago reported, citing officials.

Over 2,000 cancellations and more than 8,000 delays affected the US on Friday, according to data from the tracking site FlightAware, with problems continuing into Saturday.

The National Weather Service warned that heavy snow, strong winds, and freezing conditions are expected to continue across parts of the US this weekend, with temperatures falling as low as -50 degrees Fahrenheit in the Dakotas.

Bad weather warnings have been issued across states stretching from Oregon to Maine and affecting more than 70 million people, the BBC reported.

The powerful winter weather has also caused large power outages and flooding across the East Coast, while heavy snow in Iowa and warnings of temperatures plummeting to as low as -45 degrees Fahrenheit have stalled election campaign events, The Associated Press reported.

Flights have also been affected by the continued grounding of Boeing's 737 Max-9 fleet.

Alaska Airlines has canceled around 20% of its flights each day since it grounded its fleet of 737 Max-9s, per Reuters. It has extended the cancellations through Tuesday.