DENVER — Travelers scrambled to adjust their plans Tuesday as a fast-moving snowstorm threatened to bring long delays along with a white Christmas for millions of people throughout the West and Midwest.
Part of that storm wreaked havoc in Arizona on Tuesday, leaving at least three people dead and six injured in a series of fiery crashes caused by thick, blowing dust on Interstate 10. The storm also shut down I-40 for hours with slick conditions.
The midday I-10 wrecks, about 40 miles south of Phoenix near Casa Grande, left the eastbound lanes littered with the smoldering remains of several big rigs, passenger cars and vans. Both directions of the freeway connecting Tucson to Phoenix were closed for hours as crews freed the injured and dead from the tangled wreckage. The westbound lanes of I-10 were reopened by midafternoon, and the eastbound lanes were reopened by 8 p.m.
- about eight hours after the crashes.
In all, 22 vehicles were involved in the crashes, including nine commercial trucks.
Authorities said seven people - including three children - were taken to Phoenix hospitals, and six were treated and released by Tuesday night. A 69-year-old Casa Grande man remained hospitalized with undisclosed injuries. His condition was not released.
Along 1-40 west of Flagstaff, dozens of cars and trucks were involved in collisions or slid off the highway as snow began falling Tuesday afternoon. A stretch of the highway between Williams and Ash Fork was closed intermittently. Snowy and slippery conditions were also reported on I-17 north of Sedona.
The blustery weather in Arizona is part of a storm system that promised to drop more than a foot of snow in parts of Colorado and southern Utah by midday today. Blizzard warnings were likely on Christmas Eve in Kansas and other Plains states as the storm moves east.
South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds declared a state of emergency Tuesday, giving his state more flexibility to prepare for blizzardlike conditions expected today.
The storm was expected to crawl across the Plains states through Christmas Day, with plenty of snow caused by a tropical jet stream pumpingin moisture from the storm’s south.
Stan Rose, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Pueblo, Colo., said the snowmaker would give millions of people a white Christmas.
“Pretty much the entire central and southern Rockies are going to get snow, and then it’s going east and will drop more snow,” Rose said.
A winter storm watch was in effect for most of southeast Colorado, the panhandle of Oklahoma and north Texas from late Tuesday through Thursday. By Tuesday afternoon light snow was falling in Salt Lake City. There were no major airport delays reported there or in Denver, but Christmas travelers across the region were warned to check with their airlines before arriving for flights.
In western Nebraska, a Colorado woman was killed Tuesday on Interstate 80 when her sport utility vehicle apparently hit black ice and slid across a median.
The threat of snowy Christmas delays was enough to make Leslie Boggess, 58, of eastern Colorado drive to Denver a day early to spend Christmas withher grandchildren.
“I heard about the snow, and I just didn’t know about waiting. Out there on the plains, that wind gets going, and you don’t know if it’s even safe to drive,” said Boggess, who was waiting for a bus with her 8-year-old granddaughter in a downtown Denver bus station.
Her granddaughter, Aniyah Hill, had little worry that a snowstorm would ruin her Christmas.
“I’ll get to play in the snow,” she said, somewhat seriously. “I think it’s a good thing.” The storm comes on the heels of a weekend storm that dropped record snowfall and interrupted shopping and travel on the East Coast. Delays from that storm sparked an unruly crowd that included passengers still on standby Tuesday at the Delta Air Lines terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Police were called to help with crowd control.
Rose said Christmas revelers in the West and Midwest should worry about the cold as well as the snow. Temperatures across Colorado on Christmas were not expected to get out of the 20s, with single-digits expected in the mountains.
“It’s going to be cold to begin with, and then it’s going to get even colder,” Rose said.
Information for this article was contributed by Eric Olson, Mark Carlson and Elizabeth White of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 12/23/2009