Blizzard Rolls East as Roads Reopen in Northern Plains

Snowbound cross-country bus passengers whooped and hollered for joy Wednesday as westbound Interstate 94 began opening to traffic after a two-day blizzard.

But going east, toward Fargo, the highway remained closed by snowdrifts and blowing snow as the blizzard moved into Minnesota, closing more roads there.

And police wouldn’t let anyone drive out of Marshall, Minn., where trucker Tom Leesch had been stuck in a motel since Tuesday morning because of the blowing snow.

“You could hardly see off the hood of your truck,” Leesch said. “You couldn’t see any lines on the road.”

There was no word when North Dakota crews would open north-south I-29, where 31 people were rescued Wednesday after spending the night at a rest stop near Christine, about 20 miles south of Fargo.

Duane Isaacson spent the night in the wayside’s men’s room. “It was either A, the men’s room, or B, the ladies’ room, and I chose the men’s room,” Isaacson, of Center, said by cellular phone.

In North Dakota, Greyhound buses loaded at midmorning at Steele’s Lone Steer Motel as the sun peeked through on parts of the northern Plains.

“One day here was OK,” said Denise Nicks, who was headed to Eugene, Ore., from Massachusetts to visit relatives when her bus slid into a ditch Monday. “But two days is too much.”

Reuters quoted Sharon Fletcher of the Fargo mayor’s office as saying that the local shopping center had closed. “It had to be pretty bad for the mall to shut down during the Christmas season,” she said.

There were dozens of road accidents in North Dakota but no fatalities. Motorists had to be rescued from snowdrifts beneath highway overpasses, Sgt. Mark Bethke of the Highway Patrol said.

Highways had opened in Wyoming and much of South Dakota, which had reports of drifts up to 9 feet high near Wall.

The blizzard was part of a sharp wedge of Arctic air driving southward across the nation. Morning temperatures fell all the way to 1 above zero in the Texas Panhandle, and even New Orleans got a very rare trace of snowflakes.

New Orleans City Hall closed early Wednesday, as did many southern Louisiana schools and businesses.

Residents of Alabama’s Gulf Coast were warned of freezing temperatures and many schools closed early as sleet and snow flew in the state’s western counties.

Snowplow crews were on standby at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport.

On the northern Plains, wind chills hit 50 below zero in the Dakotas, Nebraska and western Minnesota.

People were urged not to travel at all across southwestern Minnesota because stranded vehicles interfered with plows.

South Dakota was more emphatic. Bypassing barriers and traveling on closed roads is illegal and violators face arrest and $200 fines, said state Highway Patrol Supt. Gene Abdallah.