Hurricane-Force Winds, Snow, Rain Strike Midwest

A blinding storm powered through the upper Midwest on Thursday with snow, freezing rain and hurricane-force winds, en route to the East.

The storm moved across the Great Plains and onto the Great Lakes with winds of more than 90 m.p.h., blasting out plate glass windows, smashing gravel into windshields, downing power lines and billboards and closing major highways overnight along Colorado’s mountain slopes from south of Denver to near the Wyoming border.

Swirling snow cut visibility in Chicago as the storm moved through with lightning and thunder. Up to three inches of snow were reported in the city.

‘Not Expected to Last’

“The snow band was moving through fairly quickly and, although the snow may be intense for a short time, it is not expected to last very long,” a spokesman for the National Weather Service in Chicago said.

The blustery weather caused many flight delays at O’Hare International Airport, and airlines canceled hundreds of flights. A Northwest Orient Airlines DC-9 skidded off a runway while trying to land at Midway Airport on Chicago’s South Side, but none of the 50 passengers aboard were injured.

Ice on power lines caused brief outages over parts of northern Illinois.

The storm whipped up winds of 91 m.p.h. Thursday morning in Fort Collins, Colo.

‘We Couldn’t Sleep’

“I’ve been here all my life and never seen wind like that, ever,” said Tom Borquez, of suburban Lakewood, Colo. “We couldn’t sleep hardly at all.”

Wind sheared off part of a brick outer wall at the Snowbird Condominium Complex, where Borquez lives.

Boulder, Colo., was hit with 89-m.p.h. gusts that forced authorities to close Interstate 70 for several hours through Mount Vernon Canyon because of poor visibility and icy road conditions. A hangar at Jefferson County Airport partly collapsed, damaging between 10 and 20 private airplanes.

In Wheat Ridge, Colo., part of a wind-blown fence struck a woman, causing a lung to collapse and breaking her collarbone. A man was slightly hurt by a cabinet that fell on him when a construction trailer he was sleeping in was knocked on its side.

Milwaukee Gets Two Inches

The storm dumped five inches of snow in Juneau County, Wis., four inches in Eau Claire, Wis., and two inches in Milwaukee.

Sleet and freezing rain forced more than 25 school districts in north-central and northeastern Iowa to delay classes up to two hours.

The Iowa Highway Patrol said several cars slipped off highways and into ditches in the Mason City area, where roads were 100% snow and ice covered.

Winter storm watches were in effect across northern Virginia, northern Delaware, the District of Columbia and central and northern Maryland, where residents still were digging out from back-to-back snowstorms that have paralyzed much of Northeast since late last week.

Roads Already Covered

“This certainly will not be anywhere as bad as what the earlier ones were,” weather service forecaster Joe Cefaratti said in Washington, where many roads remained covered with snow and ice from 20 inches of snow dropped by previous storms.

The city and federal governments in Washington opened a few hours late on Thursday, and thousands of area public schoolchildren attended classes, most for the first time since Jan. 22, when the first storm hit.