OMAHA, Neb. — Christmas travelers battled slick, icy roads and flight cancellations and delays Wednesday as a winter storm spread across much of the nation’s midsection - and the worst of the weather is still expected to come.
The slow-moving storm is expected to intensify today as it continues its trek north and east, dumping heavy snow, sleet and rain on a large swath of the Plains and the Midwest. A foot or two of snow is possible in some areas by Christmas Day.
“It’s an unusually large storm, even for the Plains,” said Scott Whitmore, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Topeka, Kan.
In northwest Kansas, snow started falling before sunrise Wednesday, after freezing rain had already iced over roads. Part of Gove County saw 8 inches of snow, though it was far lighter elsewhere, said Albert Pietrycha, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Goodland.
A stretch of Interstate 70 in western Kansas was snow packed by midafternoon, although it wasn’t closed. The state Department of Transportation warned that travel will be almost impossible in northeast Kansas by this afternoon.
“It’s kind of hard to stay on the roads. You’ve got to go slow,” said Jason Juhan, a clerk at the Love’s truck stop in Goodland. “People are just trying to get through and get to where they need to as fast as they can.”
Still, he saw an upside to the weather: “It’s been a few years since we’ve actually had a white Christmas out this way.”
The storm began in the Southwest - where blizzard like conditions shut down roads and caused a 20-vehicle pileup in Arizona on Tuesday - and spread east and north, prompting weather advisories from the Rocky Mountains toLake Michigan.
In Colorado, numerous accidents prompted state transportation officials to close a section of Interstate 25 from Wellington to Cheyenne, Wyo., for several hours.
Parts of Nebraska were coated with ice that was up to a quarter-inch thick, and a number of churches were already canceling Christmas Eve services in expectation of more ice and snow.
But, jewelry-store owner Stan Soper of Ord, a town of about 2,300 in north-central Nebraska, said the weather “isn’t nearly as bad as they said it would be.”
Slippery roads were blamed for accidents that killed at least six people - three on Interstate 80 in Nebraska, two on Interstate 70 in Kansas and one near Albuquerque, N.M. South of Phoenix, a dust storm set off a series of collisions that killed at least three people Tuesday.
In Chicago, more than 200 flights at O’Hare International Airport were canceled, along with about 60 flights out of Midway International Airport, the city’s Aviation Department said.
Mollie Sheridan, a 30-year old artist from Philadelphia, had planned to fly to Ohio to be with her family for Christmas. Instead she was trying to sleep on a row of seats at the Midway airport after Southwest Airlines canceled dozens of flights, including hers.
She said her father was driving five hours to Chicago to pick her up.
“I’m not that frustrated,” Sheridan said. “I have a dad who loves me who’s coming to get me. It hasn’t spoiled my Christmas.”
The storm forced the closure of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.
The National Weather Service in Sioux Falls warned of treacherous travel conditions from Wednesday through Friday night, calling the storm “life-threatening.”
A tropical jet stream pumping in moisture to the storm from the south was likely to cause plenty of snow throughout the Plains and the Midwest, with the biggest accumulations expected fromeastern Nebraska to the Upper Mississippi Valley. Freezing rain was possible across parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.
Travelers scrambled to adjust their plans before the worst of the storm hit.
“I was going to wait a little longer, but when I woke up this morning I heard on the news that it was only going to get worse and worse, so I hit the road earlier than planned,” said Rachel Ahrens, of Papillion, Neb., who stopped for gas Wednesday off Interstate 80 in Des Moines, Iowa, on her way to Ames, Iowa.
Jeff Cox, manager of Southtown Liquors in Albert Lea in southern Minnesota, near the Iowa border, said the store had seen a steady stream of customers amid snow andfreezing rain.
“They don’t want to be stuck home with nothing,” Cox said.
This winter blast follows a weekend storm that dropped record snowfall and interrupted Christmas shopping and travel on the East Coast. Tens of thousands of customers in West Virginia and Virginia remained without power Wednesday.
Christmas travelers and commuters alike were stranded in the Northeast on Wednesday after an electrical problem forced Amtrak to halt trains in and out of New York’s Penn Station. The failure affected service as far south as Washington and as far north as Boston.
Power was restored after about three hours.
Spokesman Cliff Cole said Amtrak was investigating Wednesday’s malfunction and there was no indication that human error caused it but that extreme weather can affect the electrical system. Weather across the region Wednesday morning was seasonally cold but mostly clear.
During Wednesday’s stoppage, travelers packed a waiting area at Penn Station in New York City, sitting on suitcases with bags of gifts scattered around them. A display board showed grim news for every train.
Information for this article was contributed by John Hanna, Nate Jenkins, Eric Olson, Dirk Lammers, Michael J. Crumb, Caryn Rousseau, Michael Tarm, Jeff Baenen, David Porter, Sara Kugler, Ron Todt, Sarah Karush, Denise Lavoie and Jacquelyn Martin of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/24/2009