Blizzard Shuts Roads Across Northern Plains

Stranded travelers packed the Lone Steer Motel as many as five to a room Tuesday to wait out a blizzard that cut visibility nearly to zero, bringing much of the northern Plains to a standstill.

“If there’s a shining star to this whole deal, it’s that hot tub and sauna in there,” said Harvey Lambright of Peru, Ill., who was sharing a room with four other passengers from a Greyhound bus.

Greyhound shut down all service between Great Falls, Mont., and Minneapolis, said bus driver Harry Edwards. Hundreds of miles of highway were closed across North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska, and schools were closed across the region because of dangerous road conditions.

Winds of up to 60 mph blew snow in blinding clouds. In eastern Wyoming, the gales pushed windchills to nearly 50 below zero.

Wyoming’s northeastern corner was shut off from the outside world, and hundreds of trucks were waiting out the weather in Sheridan, Gillette and Buffalo.

South Dakota closed 170 miles of Interstate 90 across the western two-thirds of the state because of zero visibility, and other roads were closed by drifts several feet high.

The wind pounded the snow into drifts “as hard as cement,” said Richard Burns, highway foreman in South Dakota’s Brown County.

Authorities in some states said many roads may not be reopened until today because plows have been unable to keep up with the drifts.

The weather was blamed for an 18-vehicle pileup in northwest Nebraska. Authorities said no serious injuries were reported in the chain-reaction crash, which happened in zero-visibility Monday night.

Todd Heitkamp, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, S.D., said rural areas of South Dakota, Minnesota and northwest Iowa were among the worst-hit by the storm. “The windchills are the real problem. We’re going to see the temperature with the windchill get to 35 to 50 below zero,” Heitkamp said.

At the Lone Steer, about 40 miles east of Bismarck, N.D., about 150 people crammed into the rooms and borrowed blankets to sleep in the banquet hall after they were forced to pull off Interstate 94.

The snowbound guests passed the time watching a truck parked about 75 feet away as it disappeared behind windblown snow, like it was being “beamed up” on “Star Trek,” then reappear whenever gusts subsided.

Lone Steer manager Susie White said the motel had plenty of food for its unexpected guests.

“We’d have to go into about a five-day blizzard before we’d have to worry,” White said.