Snowstorm slams road, air travel in US Midwest

A satellite view of an enormous winter storm system running across the US from Canada all the way down to the Florida panhandle.

Reuters/Minneapolis

A late winter storm dumped heavy snow on the midwestern US yesterday, contributing to numerous highway crashes and flight cancellations as it moved east toward the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic states.

More than 1,000 flights were cut in and out of Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports and 107 more were cancelled in and out of Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport, according to the FlightAware.com flight tracking service.

In western Wisconsin, a semi-tractor flipped off an Interstate 94 bridge and fully submerged in the Red Cedar River in Menomonie early yesterday, said Christine Ouellete, a Wisconsin Transportation Department spokeswoman.

The truck’s two occupants have not been heard from since the crash and rescue crews pulled the tractor from the river and were working to get into the cab, said Lieutenant Jeff Lorentz of the Wisconsin State Patrol.

The truck had been headed west, but the eastbound lanes of I-94 have been closed at the site since just after the crash for the rescue crews. The interstate was open otherwise.

Slick roads contributed to numerous crashes and a slow commute across the border in Minnesota. Driving conditions remained difficult along highways in parts of North Dakota.

Roads in northwest Illinois had patches of ice and snow yesterday and road crews were bracing in northeast Illinois for the storm, which began dropping snow on Chicago near the middle of the morning rush hour.

Chicago was forecast to get 4 to 8in (10 to 20cm) of snow, down about 2in from a previous forecast, according to the National Weather Service. The heaviest snow was expected yesterday afternoon in the region, up to one inch per hour, and expected to snarl the evening rush hour.

The storm was expected to move eastward over the Ohio Valley and then the central Appalachians and mid-Atlantic states today, hitting Washington with its biggest snowfall in possibly two years, the National Weather Service said.

Winter storm warnings were in effect for all or parts of 16 states from the Upper Midwest to the mid-Atlantic yesterday, National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro said.

The storm was forecast to move across Ohio and the Tennessee Valley and merge with a developing storm off the mid-Atlantic states that could produce heavy, wet snow overnight and through today into the mid-Atlantic states that could bring down trees and power lines, Vaccaro said.

“It will be a wet, heavy, gloppy snow consistent with wallpaper paste,” he said.

Vaccaro said upwards of 10 to 12in of snow was possible, and locally higher amounts in the Appalachians, West Virginia and eastern Maryland.

“We’re expecting a sizeable accumulation for Washington DC, where there has not been a storm to produce more than 2in of snow since January 2011,” Vaccaro said.

North Dakota yesterday was digging out from the storm, which caused blowing snow and drifts up to 3ft high in blizzard conditions in the northwest oil region, a foot of snow near Minot and 15in near Grand Forks on Monday.