It's no secret that we've got some winter weather heading our way this afternoon and throughout the evening tonight across New York state, and as always, we want to make sure our viewers are well informed.

Gov. Kathy Hochul exclusively joins Spectrum News 1 to update New Yorkers on extreme weather as a significant storm system moves through the State, bringing heavy rain and strong winds causing a potential for flooding and power outages.

"Well, this is a classic Nor'easter, and we are tracking it very, very closely with our brand new state of the art, State Weather Risk Communication Center, and we've been getting up to the minute analytics and intelligence that we've never had before, so we feel that our information is very precise," she said.

"We just want to let people know that this is going to be one of those storms where we encourage people to stay home," Hochul continued. "Don't go out in the streets, if you don't have to, it might be a great night to take down the Christmas tree or have cocoa with them and finish off the last of the Christmas cookies, watch a movie with the family, but really try to avoid being outdoors if you can because we don't want anyone to get hurt with falling limbs if it comes an ice storm and the branches snap and they come down and take down power lines, it can be very dangerous."

You can watch the full interview via the video player above.