Severe winter storm batters US, disrupts holiday travel
A powerful and rapidly intensifying winter storm sweeping across the central and eastern United States is bringing a dangerous mix of blizzard conditions, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, disrupting travel during one of the busiest periods of the holiday season.
More than 30 million people are under winter weather alerts from the Midwest to the Northeast, News.Az reports, citing CNN.
In the Upper Midwest, blizzard warnings are in effect for parts of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, where wind gusts of 40 to 60 mph are driving heavy snowfall and creating whiteout conditions.
The severe weather has led to widespread travel disruptions. Long stretches of Interstate 35, a major highway running from Texas to Minnesota, have been closed or declared unsafe for travel. Power outages have also been reported, with more than 125,000 customers without electricity early Monday, over half of them in Michigan, according to PowerOutage.US.
Air travel has also taken a hit with thousands of flights delayed or canceled Sunday, including disruptions at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, where thunderstorms prompted a temporary ground stop.
Parts of Michigan have received close to a foot of snow. Marquette, Michigan shattered its previous daily snowfall record of 8.5 inches, picking up 11.5 inches and counting as of late Sunday night.
Farther south and east, the storm’s cold front sparked a line of severe thunderstorms Sunday afternoon and evening, with damaging winds and a few tornadoes reported in parts of Illinois.
The storms developed along the sharp boundary separating unseasonably warm air from a frigid Arctic air mass moving in behind it. In Springfield, Illinois, temperatures dropped from the 70s into the 40s in just a couple of hours.
Meanwhile, in St. Louis, Missouri, the high Sunday afternoon was 77 degrees. As the front passed through the city, the National Weather Service reported a 10 degree temperature drop in about 10 minutes. Eight hours later, St. Louis was experiencing snow and temperatures in the low 20s.
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