Winter storm causes massive 60-car pile-up in Pennsylvania

Severe winter weather was impacting several U.S. states on Friday including Pennsylvania where white-out conditions were blamed for a massive 60-car pile-up.

Local officials in Western Pennsylvania’s Jefferson County said no fewer than 22 tractor-trailers and 37 cars were involved in the pile-up along interstate 80.

“I got pushed over into the other lane and I stopped and another car started coming along,” said driver Juston Ross. “A truck passed over, he was going about 60, got into a ditch and it just started piling up after that,” he said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I got pushed over into the other lane and I stopped and another car started coming along," said driver Juston Ross. "A truck passed over, he was going about 60, got into a ditch and it just started piling up after that," he said.

Local media reported low visibility in the area and slick roads due to “lake effect snow bands”. Emergency responders report three people suffered minor injuries in the chain-reaction crash.

Elsewhere, parts of Montana were expecting up to a foot of snow from a winter storm, with hazardous driving conditions reported in the city of Missoula as well as roads packed with snow.

Local media said the wind chill in parts of the state was expected to fall to between 10 and 30 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.

READ MORE: ‘Massive snow squall’ slams the GTA, causing traffic delays across the region

And in Northern California, rivers near the city of Chico were raging, causing area flooding and travel delays in the morning.

Arctic air blowing through parts of the U.S. was expected to bring another blast of cold into the Midwest, a meteorologist said.

The Arctic air swept into the Midwest earlier this week before spreading to the East Coast. Another shock of cold air arrived from Canada into Montana and North Dakota late on Thursday, Burke said.

With it comes the risk of frostbite for many parts of the northern United States, a danger weather officials have warned about all this week as a result of the unusual cold.

The Arctic front will combine with a storm flowing across the Rocky Mountains on Friday, according to National Weather Service advisory. Extreme conditions in many parts of the country will continue into Saturday, it said.

The eastward spread of the snowstorm will blanket parts of South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin with between 5 inches and 10 inches of snow (13 to 25 cm), Burke said.