Some parts of the country got an early white Christmas Tuesday, with snow and fierce winds blasting much of the central United States.
    
Road crews are on alert from northern New Mexico and the Texas panhandle through Oklahoma and Kansas.   

More than 200 flights have been cancelled just days before the busy Christmas holiday. The storm stranded motorists as blizzard conditions shut down major roadways.

"We're talking about whiteout conditions," National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Russell said.

"Southwest Kansas is pretty much shut down completely," Derek Latham, a dispatcher for the Kansas Highway Patrol in Salina, said early Tuesday.

"I have one trooper who almost went into a ditch this morning, and he came across four other cars that went into a ditch," he added. "That was just this morning."

At least two deaths in eastern Colorado have been blamed on the storm.