Midwest, Gulf Coast slammed by blizzards and nasty weather

OMAHA, Neb. (CN) — A winter storm swept across the central U.S. on Monday, shutting down much of the Great Plains and prompting the closure of major interstates, the cancellation of high school and college classes and warnings from officials to stay home.

Interstate 70 in western Kansas was closed, as was Interstate 40 west of Amarillo, Texas. Officials shut down Interstate 80 in Nebraska between Grand Island and Lexington due to what the State Patrol deemed “whiteout conditions.”

“We have a big area of low pressure and usually what you associate with low pressure is your more stormy events,” said Michaela Wood, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Valley, Nebraska, near Omaha. “It’s bringing impacts to a good chunk of the country out here.”

The low pressure system drew cold weather down from Canada and moist air up from the Gulf of Mexico. “Where a lot of that meets is where you will get your snowfall,” Wood said.

The blizzard warning extended from northeast New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, western Kansas and several counties of south-central Nebraska. A winter storm warning extended from eastern Nebraska and Kansas across the Midwest to Wisconsin and Lake Michigan.

The closed interstates are major American east-west arteries.

“There are a lot of interstates closed,” Wood said. “In terms of freight and moving things around I imagine this will have quite an impact.”

Megan Williams, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Slidell, Louisiana, near New Orleans, said heavy rain and winds across Texas and the Gulf Coast were a result of the low-pressure system.

“We’ve got these scattered to numerous storms coming through Heavy rainfall and 60 mph winds,” she said Monday afternoon. “Later tonight we are expecting a line of storms to be moving though our area, and this will have the greatest potential to see severe weather with the potential for tornadoes.”

Back in the Plains states, forecasters expected high winds Monday night and into Tuesday, with the possibility of ground blizzards, making travel difficult if not impossible, even in areas like Omaha which were outside of the blizzard warning.

This could lead to situations on Tuesday where hapless homeowners try to clear their sidewalks or driveways only to have high winds blow more snow onto onto them. “In terms of snow removal, it’s going to be quite the 24 hours here.”

Six to ten inches of snow was expected in and around Nebraska’s largest city. Snow was expected to accumulate through midnight.

“The snow will keep accumulating through today until around midnight,” Wood said. “Tuesday evening and into Wednesday is when things should really start to clear up.”

Starting Tuesday the system will move east toward the Great Lakes and then on late Wednesday and Thursday toward the eastern seaboard.

“It will weaken a little bit as it goes but it is going to bring impacts throughout the week to a good amount of people,” Wood said.

On Monday there were also blizzard warnings in the Cascades of Oregon and Washington state, the result of a different low pressure system that was expected to move into Canada, Wood said, though they may eventually impact the Dakotas.

The National Weather Service does not name winter storms, but the Weather Channel does, deeming this one Winter Storm Finn.

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Forecast warns of more severe storms in South, Midwest

(AP) — Forecasters are warning of more severe weather, including tornadoes, Tuesday and Wednesday in parts of the South and Midwest hammered just days ago by deadly storms.

That could mean more misery for people sifting through the wreckage of their homes in Arkansas, Iowa and Illinois. Dangerous conditions Tuesday also could stretch into parts of Missouri, southwestern Oklahoma and northeastern Texas. Farther south and west, fire danger will remain high.

“That could initially start as isolated supercells with all hazards possible — tornadoes, wind and hail — and then over time typically they form into a line (of thunderstorms) and continue moving eastward,” said Ryan Bunker, a meteorologist with the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

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The tornado risk in the Upper Midwest was expected to be highest in the late afternoon and evening Tuesday, and areas of southern Missouri and Arkansas were most at risk overnight.

In Keokuk County, Iowa, where 19 homes were destroyed and more were damaged Friday, emergency management official Marissa Reisen worries how those cleaning up the damage will cope if another storm hits.

“All of the people who have been impacted by the storms Friday night are doing all this work, to clean up, to gather their stuff, to pile up the debris,” Reisen said. “If a storm comes through and hits them again and throws all that hard work all over the place again, it will be so deflating to those people.”

Severe storms could produce strong tornadoes and large hail Wednesday across eastern Illinois and lower Michigan and in the Ohio Valley, including Indiana and Ohio, according to the Storm Prediction Center. The severe weather threat extends southwestward across parts of Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas.

Just last week, fierce storms that spawned tornadoes in 11 states killed at least 32 people as the system, which began Friday, plodded through Arkansas and onto the South, Midwest and Northeast.

The same conditions that fueled last week’s storms — an area of low pressure combined with strong southerly winds — will make conditions ideal for another round of severe weather Tuesday into early Wednesday, Bunker said.

Those conditions, which typically include dry air from the West going up over the Rockies and crashing into warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, are what make the U.S. so prone to tornadoes and other severe storms.

A blizzard warning was in effect for nearly all of North Dakota and most of South Dakota through at least Wednesday night. The National Weather Service predicted parts of South Dakota could see up to 16 inches (40 centimeters) of snow and wind gusts as high as 55 mph (90 kph).

Dozens of schools in South Dakota were closed on Tuesday due to blizzard conditions. State executive branch offices were also closed in much of the state.

In Minnesota, a winter storm warning was in effect in the north, while the southern part of the state expected thunderstorms that could include hail and strong winds.

The state’s popular EagleCam captured the moment in which high winds blew a 20-year-old eagle’s nest out of a tree, killing an eaglet that had hatched just days earlier. Officials believed heavy snow that fell in a weekend blizzard — coupled with the weight of the more than 2,000-pound nest — became too much for the tree to support.

The threat of fire danger is expected to remain high Tuesday across portions of far western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, northeastern New Mexico and far southeastern Colorado, with low humidity, dry vegetation and wind gusts as high as 70 mph (110 kph), according to the National Weather Service.

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By SEAN MURPHY Associated Press Writer

Associated Press writer Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

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