Brutal winter weather shows no signs of letting up: Snow, ice, bitter cold to continue from coast to coast

• Storms will wreak havoc from coast to coast not only going into this weekend, but also into next week.
• Due to Thursday's storm, more than 100,000 customers in Texas, Kentucky and West Virginia remained without power Friday morning.
• On Friday and into Saturday, some of the worst weather will be in the Pacific Northwest.

Brutal winter weather shows no signs of letting up, as the U.S. is enduring one of its busiest winter weather patterns "in decades," forecasters said Friday. 

A bitterly cold arctic air mass draped across much of the country will help fuel winter storms that will "wreak havoc from coast to coast, not only going into this weekend, but also into next week," the National Weather Service warned.

AccuWeather meteorologist Bernie Rayno called it "a stormy, stormy pattern across the country,” describing it as "unbelievable." 

Heavy snow and ice will blast the Pacific Northwest on Friday while snow and freezing rain will hit portions of the Plains, the South and the Mid-Atlantic by Saturday, the weather service said. 

According to Weather.com, the next winter storm will bring considerably worse weather conditions than what was seen early Thursday morning in Texas, when at least six people were killed and 65 others hospitalized – including frontline health care workers just getting off their shifts – in a massive chain-reaction crash that involved more than 100 vehicles on an icy Fort Worth interstate.

The crash happened as a frigid storm dropped ice and snow along a 1,500-mile swath of land for much of Thursday from Texas to southern New Jersey, triggering widespread power outages and extremely dangerous road conditions. 

Due to the storm, more than 100,000 customers in Texas, Kentucky and West Virginia remained without power Friday morning, according to Poweroutage.us. 

Kentucky was especially hard-hit with ice, where winter-weary Louisville resident Megan Adams said, "I hate winter. I hate ice. I hate the cold and wish I could hibernate from Jan. 2 to March 1."

Earlier this week:Millions in the path of a 'damaging' ice storm; Fort Worth pileup leads to at least 6 deaths, injures health care workers

On Friday and into Saturday, some of the worst weather will be in the Pacific Northwest, where a Pacific storm system slamming into the region will bring heavy snow and ice accumulations from Portland to Seattle, the weather service said. This "could be one of the heavier snow events in at least a few years in Seattle and Portland," Weather.com said.

In the East, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City are in the zone where a wintry or icy mix is forecast from later Saturday to Sunday morning, AccuWeather said. Meanwhile, it will remain cold enough for mostly snow to fall in Pittsburgh and Boston this weekend.

And in the central and southern U.S., the region is bracing for a snow and ice storm Saturday and into Monday. "Dallas is going to get at least a few, if not several inches of snow,” Rayno said.

In addition to the snow, record-shattering cold will spill into Texas and portions of the South over the next few days. Dozens of daily record lows are likely, according to Weather.com.

"Subzero lows could occur as far south as parts of Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. Oklahoma City could plunge below zero for the first time in over four years and only the third time this century," said Weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Erdman.

"In fact, nowhere else in the Northern Hemisphere – not even Siberia – will experience temperatures so far below average on Valentine's Day than in the central U.S.," he said. 

Finally, while it won't be cold in Florida, some parts of the state will have to contend with potentially severe thunderstorms by the weekend, which could disrupt NASCAR's Daytona 500 on Sunday. 

Contributing: Mary Ramsey, Louisville Courier Journal