O’FALLON, Mo. (news agencies) — Icy winter weather blanketed the U.S. on Saturday as a wave of Arctic storms threatened to break low-temperature records in the heartland, spread cold and snow from coast to coast and cast a chill over everything from football playoffs to presidential campaigns.
As the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend began, the weather forecast was a crazy quilt of color-coded advisories, from an ice storm warning in Oregon to a blizzard warning in the northern Plains to high wind warnings in New Mexico.
“It’s, overall, been a terrible, terrible winter. And it came out of nowhere — two days,” Dan Abinana said as he surveyed a snowy Des Moines, Iowa. He moved to the state from Tanzania as a child years ago, but said “you never get used to the snow.”
In Portland, Oregon, medical examiners were investigating a hypothermia death as freezing rain and heavy snow fell in a city more accustomed to mild winter rains, and hundreds of people took shelter overnight at warming centers. Weather-related deaths already were reported earlier in the week in California, Idaho, Illinois and Wisconsin.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced a state of emergency Saturday, citing “very dangerous conditions” in his state. Up to 2 feet (0.6 meters) of snow has fallen in some areas over the past week, and wind chills were well below zero.
“This event is not going away tonight. It’s not going away tomorrow,” Pillen said at a news conference “It’s going to take a number of days.”
About 1,700 miles of Nebraska highways were closed due to heavy snow. State police assisted over 400 stranded motorists, said Col. John A. Bolduc, head of the Nebraska State Patrol.
In Iowa, some cars were stuck for five hours in blowing snow on Interstate 80 after semitrailers jackknifed in slippery conditions, blocking traffic and leaving 100 vehicles trapped. Altogether, state troopers had handled 86 crashes and 535 motorist-assist calls since Friday, State Patrol Sgt. Alex Dinkla said.
Road crews were “working the snow-blowers like crazy,” Dinkla said, but high winds were blowing snow right back onto roadways.
Governors from New York to Louisiana warned residents to be prepared for worrisome weather.
Parts of Montana fell below minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 degrees Celsius) Saturday morning, and the National Weather Service said similar temperatures were expected as far as northern Kansas, with minus 50 F (minus 46 C) possible in the Dakotas. In St. Louis, too, the National Weather Service warned of rare and “life-threatening” cold.
“We’ve had, now, multiple back-to-back storms” parading across the country, weather service meteorologist Zach Taylor said. That typically happens at least a couple of times in the U.S. winter.
Still, to Eboni Jones of Des Moines, it felt unusual for “how much we’re getting all within one week.”
“It’s pretty crazy out,” Jones said while shoveling snow.
Des Moines residents Katy Becker, 26, and Dalton Gustafson, 30, were hoping to fly to Florida to celebrate their engagement and Becker’s birthday on Jan. 16. They got snowed in but planned to try again Sunday.
“Negative 20 to 80 degrees — 100-degree flip in temperature,” Gustafson said.
The temperature in parts of Iowa could dip as low as minus 14 F (minus 26 C) on Monday, when the state’s caucuses kick off the U.S. presidential primary season. And that was to say nothing of the wind: Forecasters said it would be Wednesday before below-zero windchills go away.
Republican contenders Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and former President Donald Trump all canceled campaign events because of the winter storm.
Electricity was out Saturday afternoon in hundreds of thousands of households and businesses, mainly in Michigan, Oregon and Wisconsin, according to poweroutage.us.
In Yankton, South Dakota, the temperature was minus 15 F (minus 26 C) Saturday evening. Police there said plows were “freezing and breaking,” so they would not operate until conditions improve. The Minnehaha County Highway Department also pulled its plows “due to low visibility and extreme cold temps.”
