Midwest buried under heap of snow
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (AP) — Parts of Kansas received more than a foot of snow Saturday morning as winter storms punched the nation’s midsection.
Packed snow covered streets and highways in Kansas as hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners endured another day without electricity.
We’ve had no fatalities or pileups, but we have numerous slideoffs, said Mary Beth Anderson, a Kansas Highway Patrol dispatcher. I don’t think there are a lot of travelers, just the ones who have to get out and go to work.
More than 2,300 people were in Kansas shelters Saturday because of power outages from last weekend’s ice storm and the fresh snow, said Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for the state adjutant general.
We just opened the National Guard armory in Russell because of the amount of people needing shelter, Watson said. I think they’re mostly travelers because of the highway conditions there.
Winter storm warnings and watches extended from Missouri across parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, the National Weather Service said.
Up to 15 inches of snow was forecast in sections of southern Michigan, with 10 inches possible in Detroit.
Oklahoma utilities said about 181,000 homes and businesses still had no electricity. Some 62,000 were still blacked out in Kansas.
The first several days, crews were working on emergency restoration and getting the backbone of the structure up — the main feeders and transmission lines, said Stan Whiteford, a spokesman for Public Service Co. of Oklahoma. Now they’re really getting into the neighborhoods. The customers are coming on in bigger chunks.
The latest storm was expected to cross the Ohio Valley and reach the Northeast early Sunday with a threat of ice and heavy snow. Watch what’s in store for the East Coast
In Chicago, some flights were canceled Saturday morning at O’Hare International Airport and flights were delayed by 15 to 30 minutes, said Department of Aviation spokesman Gregg Cunningham.
Oklahoma residents were mostly spared as the latest storm moved the brunt of the bad weather to Kansas and Missouri.
The National Weather Service canceled heavy snow warnings for Oklahoma early Saturday. In the central part of the state, the system brought only cold, light rain during the night, turning to snow during the morning. One to 3 inches of snow was forecast. See how winter storms form
Last weekend’s storm coated much of the Plains with ice before dumping heavy snow on New England. It killed at least 38 people, mostly in traffic accidents, including 23 in Oklahoma alone. See photos of the Northeastern storm
At its height, a million customers in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri were blacked out.
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