Snow Whips Plains States but Much of East Is Warm

Snow piled up in the Rockies and whipped across the northern Plains in record cold Tuesday, while parts of the East basked in record-high temperatures and deadly thunderstorms drenched Arkansas as the cold and warm air collided.

At the same time, more typical of warmer seasons, Hurricane Kate dealt a wild card south of Florida.

Drifting and blowing snow propelled by 30-to-40-m.p.h. wind gusts over eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota made it “a very dangerous driving area,” the National Weather Service said.

At Squaw Mountain, west of Denver at the 11,000-foot elevation in the Colorado Rockies, Tuesday morning’s 4 degrees below zero combined with wind gusting to 46 m.p.h. to make the wind-chill factor feel like 60 below. And Worland, Wyo., and Butte, Mont., were the coldest spots in the lower 48 states with lows of 17 degrees below zero.

The weather service listed a dozen record lows Tuesday, including a 15-below-zero reading at Ely, Nev., that also tied the city’s record for the whole month. As far south as Flagstaff, Ariz., thermometers dipped to a record 6 below zero. And the 30 at Sacramento overturned a record that had stood since 1893.

But in the East, that warm southerly flow created more record highs for the date Tuesday, including a pre-noon reading of 69 degrees at Buffalo, N.Y. That followed about two dozen record highs Monday.

“It has to do with the upper air wind flow; the jet stream is dipping way down to the south in the West, and going up to the north in the East,” said meteorologist Pete Reynolds at the National Severe Storms Center in Kansas City, Mo.

“Keep the heavy coats handy,” meteorologist Bob Snyder said in Ann Arbor, Mich., where temperatures were in the 60s. “This is very unusual.”

Then there was sunny Hawaii, where three to four inches of snow fell over the weekend at the summit of 13,796-foot Mauna Kea.

At the boundary of the cold air and the moist, warm air, thunderstorms broke out across the central Plains, dumping heavy rain-- nearly seven inches in 24 hours at Huntsville, Ark.--and killing three people during the night.

Across Arkansas, there was a 25- to-30-degree difference in temperatures on either side of that boundary.