Flights canceled, highways closed as winter storm wallops US
PIERRE, S.D. — A brutal winter storm knocked out power in California and the Midwest, closed interstate highways from Arizona to Wyoming and prompted more than 1,500 flight cancellations Wednesday — and the worst won’t be over for several days.
Few places were untouched by the wild weather, some at the opposite extreme: long-standing record highs were broken in cities in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
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The wintry mix was hitting hard in the northern U.S., closing schools, offices, even shutting down the Minnesota Legislature. Travel was difficult. Weather contributed to more than 1,500 U.S. flight cancellations, according to the tracking service FlightAware. More than 400 of those were due to arrive or depart from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Another 5,000-plus flights were delayed across the country.
At Denver International Airport, Taylor Dotson, her husband, Reggie, and their 4-year-old daughter, Raegan, faced a two-hour flight delay to Nashville on their way home to Belvidere, Tennessee.
They’d braved slick roads and arrived early in case of long lines at airport security but the weather delay proved unavoidable — and ironic: Reggie Dotson was in Denver to interview for a job as an airline pilot.
“I think that’s kind of funny that we’ve experienced these types of delays when that’s what he’s looking into getting into now as a career,” Taylor Dotson said.
The roads were just as bad. Wyoming’s Transportation Department posted on social media that roads across much of the southern part of the state were “impassable,” with “blowing snow and reduced to poor visibility into Friday!”
It wasn’t much better in neighboring states.
“Sometimes it’s physically impossible to keep up with Mother Nature,” said North Dakota Highway Patrol Sgt. Wade Kadrmas.
He warned those who venture out to dress appropriately. Often, when motorists get stranded, “They don’t have a winter jacket. They might be wearing shorts and flip-flops, just thinking they’re going to get from point A to point B and nothing is going to go wrong,” he said.
