A weekend of ferocious winter weather could see low-temperature records set in the U.S. heartland

Icy winter weather blanketed the U.S. on Saturday as a wave of Arctic storms threatened to break low-temperature records in the heartland, spread cold and snow from coast to coast and cast a chill over everything from football playoffs to presidential campaigns.

As the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend began, the weather forecast was a crazy quilt of color-coded advisories, from an ice storm warning in Oregon to a blizzard warning in the northern Plains to high wind warnings in New Mexico.

“It’s, overall, been a terrible, terrible winter. And it came out of nowhere — two days,” Dan Abinana said as he surveyed a snowy Des Moines, Iowa. He moved to the state from Tanzania as a child years ago, but said “you never get used to the snow.”

The harsh weather in Oregon played a role in three deaths.

In Portland, medical examiners were investigating a hypothermia death as freezing rain and heavy snow fell in a city more accustomed to mild winter rains, and hundreds of people took shelter overnight at warming centers.

Portland Fire and Rescue also reported the death of a woman in her early 30s on Saturday afternoon. An RV caught fire when a small group of people used an open flame stove to keep warm inside and a tree fell on the vehicle, causing the fire to spread. Three other people escaped, including one with minor injuries, but the woman was trapped inside, the fire department said.

Authorities in Lake Oswego, Oregon, said a large tree fell on a home during high winds Saturday, killing an older man on the second floor.

Weather-related deaths already were reported earlier in the week in California, Idaho, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced a state of emergency, citing “very dangerous conditions.” Up to 2 feet (0.6 meters) of snow fell in some areas over the past week, and wind chills were well below zero.

“This event is not going away tonight. It’s not going away tomorrow,” Pillen said at a news conference “It’s going to take a number…