Ogo Akpati and his son Brycson Akpati, 3, braved the strong winds and had fun sliding down a hill in Central Park Sunday, March 15,2026 in Brooklyn Park, MN. (Jerry Holt/Minnesota Star Tribune via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chaotic weather coast to coast in the U.S. — from surprising heat in California to damaging winds around Washington, D.C. — put more than half the American public in the path of extreme conditions Monday.

Storms across the nation’s eastern half forced airlines to cancel more than 3,000 flights nationwide Monday, and many schools closed early in the mid-Atlantic states where high winds and tornadoes were in the forecast.

Blizzards buried parts of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota while torrential rains flooded homes and washed out roads in Hawaii.

In Washington, the House of Representatives postponed votes because of difficulty traveling with inclement weather, and federal agencies told workers to go home early.

The private weather service AccuWeather calculated that more than 200 million people were under threat Monday of some kind of dangerous weather.

Those range from extreme heat and wildfire advisories to flood and freeze watches from the National Weather Service.

The storm system that dropped snow by the foot in the Midwest is barreling toward the East Coast with dangerously high winds and potential for “producing strong and long track tornadoes,” the weather service warned Monday.

“Wind is the primary threat, but within any of these areas of strong wind there could be some embedded tornadoes and even the potential for a tornado to develop ahead of the line,” said Evan Bentley, a meteorologist with the weather service.

The biggest threat stretched from Maryland to the upper edge of South Carolina.

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein urged residents to enable emergency alerts on their phones ahead of expected wind gusts topping 70 mph.

Blizzard conditions continued in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes on Monday after the storm walloped parts of Wisconsin and Michigan with several feet of snow.

Since Saturday, nearly 3 feet had fallen in the northern Wisconsin town of Mountain.

Another round of snow and gusty winds on Monday could bring another foot of snow across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

A heat dome over the Southwest will push temperatures well into the triple digits in Arizona most of the week, much earlier than the region usually sees.

Much of California is starting to feel like summer too. The San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento will see temperatures pushing toward 90 F by midweek.

“This is a heat wave that we have not seen before in recorded history in the Southwest,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Dan DePodwin.

Phoenix is expected to have five straight days of triple digit temperatures this week, DePodwin said.

Dry and windy conditions were charging the largest wildfire in Nebraska’s history. Fires in the state have consumed more than 937 square miles of mostly grassland.

Unrelenting rains triggered landslides and flooded homes and farmland in Hawaii over the weekend. Some areas of Maui received more than 20 inches of rain.