Winter Storm Moves Into Plains States

(CBS/AP)  A powerful winter storm that buried the foothills west of Denver with more than 2 feet of snow in areas and brought blizzard conditions and snowdrifts up to 10 feet high to the Eastern Plains has moved out of Colorado, bringing clear weather for search-and-rescue operations Sunday.

In Kansas, more than 20,000 homes and businesses remained without power and many travelers were stranded in roadside hotels Sunday after a mix of snow and ice pelted western Kansas.

The storm dumped from 15 to 30 inches. Ice also wreaked havoc in the region, snapping limbs and power lines.

"This is a very significant storm; it's in the record books," Scott Blair, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Goodland, said.

He said the current storm, combined with one just before Christmas, dumped 25 inches of snow on Goodland for the snowiest December on record since 1924.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius declared a disaster emergency Saturday afternoon that will free up resources to help 39 counties in northwest and southwest Kansas.

Westbound lanes of Interstate 70 remained closed Sunday at Salina because of dwindling hotel accommodations, said Ron Kaufman, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Transportation. The storms also closed all or portions of more than a dozen other roads, and there was no word when the roads would reopen.

"They are working frantically out there to at least clear I-70," he said. "We know people are getting really anxious, but we need to get at least one lane drivable, and we're fighting lots of blowing snow and drifting."

Once a stretch of road is cleared, snow will blow over it, forcing crews to plow the road again, he said.

"Mother nature is in charge," he said. "We can do what we can. We're trying."

The roof of a gas station in Albuquerque, N.M., closed under the weight of the snow.

"Fortunately, nobody was getting fuel at the time, nobody was injured, there's no release of any gasoline or any hazardous materials," Commander James Breen/Albuquerque Fire Department told CBS affiliate KRQE.

The Colorado National Guard and Civil Air Patrol planned to have searchers throughout southeastern Colorado, among the hardest-hit area in the state. Through Saturday evening, hundreds of stranded motorists and others had been rescued, and 658 people spent Saturday night in shelters around southern and eastern Colorado, state Division of Emergency Management spokeswoman Polly White said.

Forecasters expected mostly clear skies around the state with temperatures rising into the 30s in the southeast and winds up to 25 mph. Warmer weather was expected through the week, National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Fortune said.

As of Sunday morning, many roads in eastern Colorado remained closed, including eastbound Interstate 70 from Denver to Kansas and southbound Interstate 25 from Pueblo to New Mexico.

"There's still some blowing and drifting with winds out of the north, so east-west roads will still get some snow blown onto them," Fortune said Sunday. "But generally speaking, (the storm) has pushed on out and now it's just a cleanup process."

Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, who declared a statewide disaster emergency both for the latest storm and for the pre-Christmas blizzard a week earlier, flew over southeastern Colorado on Sunday.

"It's just completely covered with snow," Owens said during a phone interview from a state airplane. "You can't see where certain state highways are, you can only tell because of the telephone poles."

Search teams have already rescued hundreds of stranded drivers, Polly White of the Colorado Division of Emergency Management told CBS Radio News, and they were looking for more.

The Colorado Wing of the Civil Air Patrol planned to have 13 single-engine aircraft — each with three people on board — flying over the southeastern corner of Colorado through the day Sunday to look for stranded vehicles, trapped motorists or stranded livestock, said wing spokesman Steve Hamilton.

Spotters on the planes will be able to radio for help to the state National Guard, which will send helicopters or ground crews to rescue people, Hamilton said.

"We spent yesterday clearing snow from the aircraft and getting them ready to fly," he said. "Today is the first opportunity we've had to actually fly."

He said the planes would be flying about 1,000 feet above the ground.

"When you're spotting stranded vehicles, they're pretty easy to see from the air," he said.