Winter Storm Hitting The Northeast Is Worse Than Expected: Thousands Of Flights Canceled; New Yorkers Told To Stay Home

A stronger-than-expected storm system that is moving over the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Tuesday could leave up to a foot of snow in parts of the country and is already causing widespread disruption.

"Every once in a while these little winter storms go bananas, and we think this might be the one," said Kevin Roth, a meteorologist with the Weather Channel told MSNBC.

Nearly 3,000 of the nation's flights were canceled Tuesday morning. In New York City, there's already traffic problems and the MTA has advised New Yorkers to go home early and stay there. A number of states have closed schools, and many federal workers in Washington D.C. had their offices closed on Tuesday afternoon.

In addition, the National Weather Service said that temperatures across the eastern U.S. will be 10 to 25 degrees below average - with wind chill the air will feel like 10 degrees below normal in some parts - though conditions won't be as bad as those generated by the polar vortex a couple of weeks ago.

To see how the storm is affecting different parts of the country, check out the photos below:

A man uses his snow blower to clear a path around his house in Wilmette, Illinois.

People walk across Broadway in Times Square as snow falls in New York.

Police on mountain bikes patrol in the snow in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

A pedestrian walks through a snow storm in south Philadelphia.

A woman walks in a park beneath the Manhattan Bridge during snow fall in the Brooklyn borough in New York.

A woman is bundled up against the cold as a wave crashes into a pile of snow along a beach in Chicago, Illinois.

In Jersey City, N.J., wind picks up snow from the ground as a man waits to take a photograph of a statue dedicated to the victims of the Katyn massacre in 1940.

A man peers through a hole in a plastic bag during as the winter snowstorm whipped through Philadelphia on Tuesday.