Winter Lands Punch On The Midwest
Motorists and pedestrians slid on slippery pavement Wednesday morning as a storm spread snow and thick layers of ice from the Rockies to the Northeast, cutting off electricity to thousands of homes and businesses and giving some children a holiday from school.
Up to an inch of ice had formed in the Kansas City area, and layers a half-inch thick glazed highways and power lines in Iowa and the Texas Panhandle, causing numerous traffic accidents.
"It's a solid block of ice," said Casey Keylon, a dispatcher for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol in Guymon.
Snow was scattered from the Colorado Rockies across the Plains and Great Lakes all the way into sections of New England. The snow formed at the leading edge of a mass of cold air that dropped the temperature to a record low for the date of 39 below zero at Grand Forks, N.D., while Embarrass, Minn., hit 43 below, the National Weather Service said.
Accumulations of up to a foot deep were possible by Thursday in parts of Michigan, South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa, where wind gusting to 25 mph caused drifting, meteorologists said.
"You see this snow and sleet coming down. It's going to be treacherous for awhile," veteran truck driver Jim Bius told CBS Radio News. He was at the Texaco Travel Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri and was about to head out on his journey to North Carolina, but said the storm wouldn't stop him.
"I started in 1947, so every day is just the same to me," he said. "You just take the good with the bad."
A second wave of snow and sleet was expected to move across Kansas City and other parts of the Plains and adjacent regions Wednesday afternoon, adding fresh misery for people dealing with downed trees and power lines, said Mike Hudson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
"We're expecting things to get worse before they get better," said Gina Penzig, a spokeswoman for Westar Energy in Kansas. That utility said it could be up to a week before it can restore service to 80,000 customers.
"We've got a lot of people here just waiting to see what the weather's going to do today," said Bob McIntyre, general manager of the Petro Truck Stop in York, Neb., along Interstate 80.
Along with Kansas, Missouri also was hard-hit by power outages. Kansas City Power & Light reported about 31,000 customers blacked out in the Kansas City area, and Aquila Inc. said about 23,000 customers lost electrical service in the city's Missouri suburbs.
Kansas state employees in Topeka were told not to report to work. The Kansas National Guard was taking generators to two nursing homes that were blacked out.
Airlines cut 370 flights at O'Hare International Airport and six flights at Midway International Airport Wednesday morning, city Department of Aviation spokeswoman Kristen Cabanban said.
Only about half of Wednesday morning's flights made it out of Kansas City International Airport.
Scattered school closings were reported Wednesday from Colorado and New Mexico to Michigan.
Governors declared states of emergency for parts of Kansas and Arizona, where one man died and a second was missing in a flash flood caused by drenching rain when the storm blew out of Southern California.
Weather-related traffic deaths included five in Oklahoma; one in each Colorado, Nebraska and South Dakota; and one Monday in California. A search resumed Wednesday for two people who had been in a car that was washed off a bridge in Missouri.
"Make that conscious decision about traveling. Is it necessary or can you wait a couple hours?" said Dennis Burkheimer, winter operations administrator for Iowa's highway department.
The storm brought 30 inches of snow to a mountaintop ski resort outside Flagstaff, Ariz., and as much as 3 feet had fallen in the mountains around Los Angeles.
The winter storm started as rain in much of New Jersey on Wednesday and was expected to bring as much as 8 inches of snow to some spots, and freezing rain and ice in many others, making for dangerous commutes later in the day and Thursday morning.
On Tuesday, an avalanche blocked U.S. Highway 550 on Red Mountain Pass north of Durango, Colo., — though skiers could still get to the Durango Mountain ski resort.
"We got dumped on. The snow is just outrageously amazing," said Amy Williams, who closing her Avalanche Coffee House in Silverton, Colo., to go skiing in the fresh powder.
"I didn't think the snow would ever come," said Alex Schulte, a 14-year-old snowboarding enthusiast in Sioux Falls, S.D.
California was getting a respite from winter storms, but more is on the way, said CBS News' Cullen.
"It looks like by Thursday night, into early Friday, the southern part of California is going to get hammered again, with a combination of heavy rain and mountain snow," Cullen said. "Then another snow will be dropping in, probably early in the weekend across the entire West Coast, so we're going to see storm after storm affecting the entire Pacific coastline, probably over the next few days."