Almost 400,000 customers were without power in Michigan as of early Saturday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us. The two main utilities in the state, DTE and Consumers Energy, have said they hope to have the lights back on for most of their customers by Sunday night.

Brian Wheeler, a spokesman for Consumers Energy, said half an inch (1.27 centimetres) of ice weighed down some power lines – equivalent to the weight of a baby grand piano.

In Kalamazoo, Michigan, Allison Rinker was using a borrowed generator to keep her 150-year-old house warm on Saturday after two nights in the cold and dark.

“We were all surviving, but spirits were low on the second day,” she said. “As soon as the heat came back and we were able to have one or two lights running, it was like a complete flip in attitude.”

After driving to a relative’s home to store food, Rinker, 27, compared the destruction of trees to tornado damage.

“The ice that was falling off the trees as it was melting was hitting our windshield so hard, I was afraid it was going to crack,” she said. “There’s just tree limbs everywhere, half of the trees just falling down. The destruction is insane.”

Back in California, the Weather Prediction Centre of the National Weather Service forecast heavy snow over the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada into the weekend.

The low-pressure system was expected to bring widespread rain and snow in southern Nevada by Saturday afternoon and across northwest Arizona Saturday night and Sunday morning, the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas said.

An avalanche warning was issued for the Sierra Nevada backcountry around Lake Tahoe, which straddles the California-Nevada border. Nearly 2 feet (61cm) of new snow had fallen by Friday and up to another 5 feet (1.5 metres) was expected when another storm moves in with the potential for gale-force winds and high-intensity flurries on Sunday, the weather service said.

In Arizona, the heaviest snow was expected late on Saturday through to midday Sunday, with up to a foot of new snow possible in Flagstaff, forecasters said.

Weekend snow also was forecast for parts of the upper Midwest to the Northeast, with pockets of freezing rain over some areas of the central Appalachians. The storm was expected to reach the central high Plains by Sunday evening.

Yet the cold weather blasting the North and West avoided the southern states, leading to wild temperature differences. The high temperature for the US on Friday was 93 degrees Fahrenheit (34 degrees) at Falcon Lake, Texas, while the low was minus-35 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 degrees) near Huntley, Montana.

At least three people have died in the coast-to-coast storms. A Michigan firefighter died on Wednesday after coming into contact with a downed power line, while in Rochester, Minnesota, a pedestrian died after being hit by a city-operated snowplough. Authorities in Portland, Oregon, said a person died of hypothermia.

Much of Portland was shut down with icy roads not expected to thaw until Saturday after the city’s second-heaviest snowfall on record this week: nearly 11 inches (28 centimetres).

Tim Varner sat huddled with blankets in a Portland storefront doorway shielding him from some of the wind, ice and snow. Local officials opened six overnight shelters but the 57-year-old, who has been homeless for two decades, said it was too hard to push a shopping cart containing his belongings to reach one.

“It’s impossible,” he said. “The snow gets built up on the wheels of your cart and then you find slippery spots and can’t get no traction. So you’re stuck.”

AP