Old Man Winter has steadily made his presence felt in recent days. California was the first to get struck this past weekend and as the storm moved west, few states have been spared. Widespread high wind events, Arctic cold and snow have marked the storms as they crossed the central United States.

Today the same system that gave us Arctic temperatures in Denver has moved to the east. As it does, Nebraska, Iowa and states along the Great Lakes are feeling its effects.

NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites moved over the western half of the nation and captured amazing imagery showing how widespread the winter weather was.

A severe winter storm blustered its way across the United States on December 7 and 8, 2009. The storm dumped heavy snow from California to the Great Plains, and fierce winds added to the hazardous conditions. The storm was predicted to continue eastward in midweek, and blizzard warnings were in effect for Great Lakes states as of December 9.

This image shows the blanket of snow laid down by the storm across the West, along with the thick swirl of storm clouds over the Great Plains from North Dakota to Oklahoma. The image is made from a combination of images captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors on NASA’s Terra (most of the left side of the image) and Aqua (most of the right side) satellites on December 8.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, based on individual images from the MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.