PIERRE, S.D. (AP) \u2014 A brutal winter storm closed interstate highways from Arizona to Wyoming Wednesday, trapped drivers in cars, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people and prompted the first blizzard warning in Southern California in decades \u2014 and the worst won\u2019t be over for several days.
\nFew places were untouched by the wild weather, including some at the opposite extreme: long-standing record highs were broken in cities in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
\nThe wintry mix hit hard in the northern U.S., closing schools, offices, even shutting down the Minnesota Legislature. Travel was difficult. Weather contributed to more than 1,600 U.S. flight cancellations, according to the tracking service FlightAware. More than 400 of those were due to arrive or depart from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Another 5,000-plus flights were delayed across the country.
\nAt Denver International Airport, Taylor Dotson, her husband, Reggie, and their 4-year-old daughter, Raegan, faced a two-hour flight delay to Nashville on their way home to Belvidere, Tennessee.
\nReggie Dotson was in Denver to interview for a job as an airline pilot.
\n\u201cI think that\u2019s kind of funny that we\u2019ve experienced these types of delays when that\u2019s what he\u2019s looking into getting into now as a career,\u201d Taylor Dotson said.
\nThe roads were just as bad.
\nIn Wyoming, rescuers tried to reach people stranded in vehicles but high winds and drifting snow created a \u201cnear-impossible situation\u201d for them, said Sgt. Jeremy Beck of the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
\n\u201cThey know their locations, it\u2019s just hard for them to get them,\u201d he said.
\nWyoming\u2019s Transportation Department posted on social media that roads across much of the southern part of the state were impassable.
\nIn the Pacific Northwest, high winds and heavy snow in the Cascade Mountains prevented search teams from reaching the bodies of three climbers killed in an avalanche on Washington\u2019s Colchuck Peak over the weekend. Two experts from the Northwest Avalanche Center were hiking to the scene Wednesday to determine if conditions might permit a recovery attempt later this week.
\nPowerful winds were the biggest problem in California, toppling trees and power lines. By Wednesday evening, more than 65,000 customers in the state were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us.
\nA 1-year-old child was critically injured Tuesday evening when a redwood crashed onto a home in Boulder Creek, a community in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco, KTVU reported.
\nFor the first time since 1989, a blizzard warning was issued for the mountains of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, effective from 4 a.m. Thursday to 4 p.m. Saturday, the National Weather Service said.
\n\u201cNearly the entire population of CA will be able to see snow from some vantage point later this week if they look in the right direction (i.e., toward the highest hills in vicinity),\u201d UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tweeted.
\nA more than 200-mile (320-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 40 from central Arizona to the New Mexico line closed due to snow, rain and wind gusts of up to 80 mph (129 kph). More than 8,000 customers were without power in Arizona.
\nIn the northern U.S. \u2014 a region accustomed to heavy snow \u2014 the snowfall could be significant. More than 18 inches (46 centimeters) may pile up in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, the National Weather Service said Wednesday evening. According to the weather service, the biggest snow event on record in the Twin Cities was 28.4 inches (72 centimeters) from Oct. 31 through Nov. 3, 1991.
\nTemperatures could plunge as low as minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 degrees Celsius) Thursday and to minus 25 F (minus 32 C) Friday in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Wind chills may fall to minus 50 F (minus 46 C), said Nathan Rick, a meteorologist in Grand Forks.
\nWind gusts may reach 50 mph (80 kph) in western and central Minnesota, resulting in \u201csignificant blowing and drifting snow with whiteout conditions in open areas,\u201d the weather service said.
\nThe weather even prompted about 90 churches in western Michigan to cancel Ash Wednesday services, WZZM-TV reported.
\nThe storm will make its way toward the East Coast later this week. Places that don\u2019t get snow may get dangerous amounts of ice. Forecasters expect up to a half-inch (1.3 centimeters) of ice in parts of southern Michigan, northern Illinois and some eastern states.
\nThe potential ice storm has power company officials on edge. Nearly 1,500 line workers are ready to be deployed if the ice causes outages, said Matt Paul, executive vice president of distribution operations for Detroit-based DTE Electric. He said a half-inch of ice could cause hundreds of thousands of outages.
\nA half-inch of ice covering a wire \u201cis the equivalent of having a baby grand piano on that single span of wire, so the weight is significant,\u201d Paul said.
\nMore than 192,000 customers in Michigan and nearly 89,000 in Illinois were without electricity Wednesday evening, according to PowerOutage.us.
\nAs the northern U.S. dealt with the winter blast, National Weather Service meteorologist Richard Bann said some mid-Atlantic and Southeastern cities set new high temperature marks by several degrees.
\nThe high in Lexington, Kentucky, reached 76 F (24 C), shattering the Feb. 22 mark of 70 F (21 C) set 101 years ago. Nashville, Tennessee, reached 78 F (26 C), topping the 1897 record by 4 degrees. Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Mobile, Alabama, were among many other places seeing record highs.<\/p>\n
Apnews<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aFlights grounded, blizzards<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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