A large spring snowstorm delivering heavy snow, high winds and rain caused travel problems from Wyoming to Chicago on Tuesday.
In Wyoming, some big stretches of Interstates 25 and 80 were closed Tuesday morning before being reopened, but snow and blowing snow conditions were still making driving dangerous along the interstates and smaller highways. No unnecessary travel was advised Tuesday afternoon on about 180 miles of I-25 between Cheyenne and Casper because heavy snow was causing near white-out conditions.
Meanwhile, freezing rain, snow and strong winds hit Kansas and South Dakota, where numerous local elections were postponed. Some schools in Minnesota dismissed students early as travel conditions deteriorated.
Snow in the Denver area was lighter than expected but about 500 flights were canceled at Denver International Airport and deicing delayed those flights that were departing.
Flights bound for Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, meanwhile, were delayed an average of nearly four hours because of dense fog.
Although April snowstorms aren’t unusual in Wyoming and the western Rocky Mountains, the storm comes after a rather tame winter in many areas.
“We haven’t really had bad days like today where everybody is stuck and nobody can go anywhere,” said Sam Blaney, working the service counter at the Petro truck stop in Laramie.
About two dozen truckers and other motorists took refuge at the truck stop to wait out the storm, he said.
Many areas of Wyoming and western Nebraska received more than a foot of snow. In western Nebraska, road crews reported 8- to 9-foot drifts.
“I’m pretty confident that this particular storm is more widespread and has caused more travel problems and closures than any storm we’ve had this calendar year certainly,” said Bruce Burrows, spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Transportation.
As the storm moved into Colorado on Monday night, two tornadoes were reported near Akron on eastern Colorado’s plains though forecasters hadn’t confirmed the twisters. A trailer home rolled over onto its top, a roof blew off a barn and six power poles were toppled, Washington County undersheriff Jon Stivers said.
Cold temperatures that made it feel more like January or February engulfed the entire state with many areas expecting daytime temperatures in the teens and 20s.
The National Weather Service said Cheyenne’s high of 12 degrees Tuesday was the coldest on record for April 9. The previous record was 23 degrees set in 1997.
The temperature in Denver was expected to dip below 10 degrees with wind chills possibly below zero Tuesday night and early today.
The same storm system toppled trees in San Francisco, produced gusts more than 80 mph in southern California, fanning wildfires, and kicked up a dusty haze in Phoenix on Monday, closing a stretch of Interstate 40 in northern Arizona.
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