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| This photo provided by the Iowa State Patrol shows the scene of a 25-vehicle pileup that killed three people Thursday, Dec. 20, 2012 north of Des Moines, Iowa. Authorities said drivers were blinded by blowing snow and didn’t see vehicles that had slowed or stopped on Interstate 80 about 60 miles north of Des Moines. A chain reaction of crashes involving semitrailers and passenger cars closed down a section of the highway. |
DES MOINES, Iowa
(AP) -- The first widespread snowstorm of the season crawled across
the Midwest on Thursday, with whiteout conditions stranding holiday
travelers and sending drivers sliding over slick roads - including into a
fatal 25-vehicle pileup in Iowa.
The storm,
which dumped a foot of snow in parts of Iowa and Wisconsin, was part of a
system that began in the Rockies earlier in the week before trekking
into the Midwest. It was expected to move across the Great Lakes
overnight before moving into Canada.
The storm
led airlines to cancel about 1,000 flights ahead of the Christmas
holiday - relatively few compared to past big storms, though the number
was climbing.
On the southern edge of the
system, tornadoes destroyed several homes in Arkansas and peeled the
roofs from buildings, toppled trucks and blew down oak trees and limbs
Alabama.
In Iowa, drivers were blinded by
blowing snow and didn't see vehicles that had slowed or stopped on
Interstate 35 about 60 miles north of Des Moines, state police said. A
chain reaction of crashes involving semitrailers and passenger cars
closed down a section of the highway. Officials said two people were
killed and seven injured.
"It's time to listen to warnings and get off the road," said Iowa State Patrol Col. David Garrison.
Thomas
Shubert, a clerk at a store in Gretna near Omaha, Neb., said his
brother drove him to work in his truck, but some of his neighbors
weren't so fortunate.
"I saw some people in my neighborhood trying to get out. They made it a few feet, and that was about it," Shubert said.
Along
with Thursday's fatal accident in Iowa, the storm was blamed for
traffic deaths in Nebraska, Kansas and Wisconsin. In southeastern Utah, a
woman who tried to walk for help after her car became stuck in snow
died Tuesday night.
The heavy, wet snow made
some unplowed streets in Des Moines nearly impossible to navigate in
anything other than a four-wheel drive vehicle. Even streets that had
been plowed were snow-packed and slippery.
The
storm made travel difficult from Kansas to Wisconsin, forcing road
closures, including a 120-mile stretch of Interstate 35 from Ames, Iowa
through Albert Lea, Minn. Sections of Interstate 80 in Nebraska and
Interstate 29 in Missouri that had been closed were reopened Thursday
afternoon. Iowa and Wisconsin activated National Guard troops to help
rescue stranded drivers.
Those who planned to fly before the Christmas holiday didn't fare much better.
Shanna
Tinsley, 17, and Nicole Latimer, 20, were both headed to the Kansas
City area to see their families for the holiday when their flight
Thursday morning out of Milwaukee's General Mitchell International
Airport was canceled. Neither cared about a white Christmas, and were
hoping to get on another flight later in the day.
"It would be cool I guess, but I'd rather be there than stuck without family with a white Christmas," Latimer said.
Added Tinsley, "Wisconsin is full of snow, you see it all the time."
In
Chicago, commuters began Thursday with heavy fog and cold, driving
rain, and forecasters said snow would hit by mid-afternoon.
Airlines
delayed and canceled hundreds of flights out of Chicago's O'Hare and
Midway international airports. Southwest Airlines canceled all of its
flights at its Midway hub that were scheduled for after 4:30 p.m., and
American Airlines said it was shutting down its O'Hare operations after 8
p.m.
Airlines were waiving fees for customers
impacted by the storm who wanted to change their flights. They were
monitoring the storm throughout the night to determine if more
cancellations would be necessary on Friday.
The
cancellations were getting a lot of attention because the storm came
just a few days before Christmas. But Daniel Baker, CEO of flight
tracking service FlightAware.com called it "a relatively minor event in
the overall scheme of things."
By comparison,
airlines canceled more than 13,000 flights over a two-day period during a
February 2011 snowstorm that hit the Midwest. And more than 20,000
flights were canceled during Superstorm Sandy.
Before the storm, several cities in the Midwest had broken records for the number of consecutive days without measurable snow.
In
the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale, Kristin Isenhart, 38, said her
three kids, ages 9, 5 and 3, were asking about going outside to play
after school was canceled for the day.
"They
are thrilled that it snowed," she said. "They've asked several times to
go outside, and I might bundle them up and let them go."
As
far as the region's drought, meteorologists said the storm wouldn't
make much of a dent. It takes a foot or more of snow to equal an inch of
water, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought
Mitigation Center.
Meanwhile, tens of
thousands of people lost power in Arkansas, Iowa and Nebraska as heavy
snow and strong winds pulled down lines. Smaller outages were reported
in Alabama, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Louisiana.
"The
roads have been so bad our crews have not been able to respond to
them," said Justin Foss, a spokesman for Alliant Energy, which had
13,000 customers without power in central Iowa. "We have giant
four-wheel-drive trucks with chains on them, so when we can't get there
it's pretty rough."
Tom Tretter and his wife,
Pat, had been without power since Wednesday night, and temperatures
Thursday were dropping. The retired seniors were shoveling their steep
driveway Thursday afternoon and scraping ice off the walkway to their
Des Moines home.
"It's getting cold in the house," Tom Tretter said, leaning on his shovel in the driveway. "And I'm getting too old for this."
Blake
Landau, a cook serving eggs, roast beef sandwiches and chili to hungry
snowplow drivers at Newton's Paradise Cafe in downtown Waterloo, Iowa,
said he has always liked it when it snows on his birthday. He turned 27
on Thursday.
"It's kind of one of those things
where it's leading up to Christmas time," Landau said. "We don't know
when we get our first snowfall, and I hope we get it by my birthday.
It's nice to have a nice snowy Christmas."
