Cold temperatures have socked much of the country early, bringing freezing temperatures and mounds of snow in some of the earliest winter weather in decades.

Winter has debuted early in the USA. So early, in fact, that river ice has already ended the shipping season on the upper Mississippi river. The shipping season was ended early on November 20, the earliest shut down since records were first started in 1969.

This month areas of Michigan and Western New York were slammed with snow up to six feet in depth in some places snarling traffic and causing buildings roofs to collapse under the strain.

But the early snowfall didn’t wait until November to hit the nation. As early as the day after Labor Day Barrow, Alaska found one of its earliest significant snowfalls in recent memory.

There was even snow in Chicago on Halloween Day, the first appreciable snow fall on that scary night since 1993. Chicago found one-tenth of an inch of snow before noon on the 31st snarling Chicago’s O’Hare airport and canceling over 700 flights.

Speaking of Chicago, the city and surrounding county are already reporting up to five deaths from the sub freezing temperatures.

Halloween heralded a November that brought major snow and ice storms from the great Northwest eastward to Minnesota and Illinois and even brought unseasonably cold temperatures and sleeting rain as far south as Nashville, Tennessee.

The heavy snow in much of the upper Midwest and North threatens to cause trouble for Thanksgiving travelers, too. Winter storm Cato is disrupting power and hampering travel all across the East Coast this year.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter: @warnerthuston. Email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.