Latest Storm Cuts Power to More Than 100,000

More than 100,000 people waited Saturday for electricity to be turned back on as the latest in a series of storms blew blinding snow and bitingly cold air across the nation’s heartland.

Police urged travelers to stay off the roads in parts of the northern Plains as blowing snow cut visibility to near zero. Highways had been shut down overnight in parts of Wyoming, cutting off access to one town, and wind gusting to 41 mph produced wind chills as low 47 degrees below zero at Fergus Falls, Minn.

“If anybody gets out on the roads, you’re nuts,” said South Dakota Highway Patrol Trooper John Norberg in Sioux Falls.

Rotten weather over the past week had grounded hundreds of airline flights, snarled highway traffic, closed schools and brought down power lines from Texas to the Great Lakes and from the Northwest to New England. The storms were linked to more than a dozen deaths, including nine in Arkansas.

More than 100,000 homes and businesses across Arkansas still had no electricity for heat and lights Saturday. With wind chills well below zero forecast by this morning and wind expected to gust to 40 mph, some people might not have power until Tuesday, according to Entergy Arkansas, the state’s largest utility.

An additional 30,000 customers were still without electricity in northwest Louisiana on Saturday, three days after the region was hit by an ice storm, and 32,000 others remained in the dark in East Texas, said the utility AEP-Swepco.

Saturday’s roughest weather stretched from the northern Rockies to the Mississippi Valley, with wind driving snow across the northern Plains at more than 50 mph in places.

Because of poor visibility, Wyoming authorities closed a number of highways Friday night, including stretches of interstates 25 and 80.

All roads were closed late Friday in and out of Lusk, a ranching community of 1,500 in east-central Wyoming, stranding people who were in town for a basketball game. The town’s six motels filled up before Judy Ludemann could get a room.

“The nicest lady came over at the game and asked us if we had a place to stay and she took seven of us over to her house, and she didn’t know any of us,” said Ludemann, who had traveled 110 miles from Upton to watch her grandson and granddaughter play.

In Iowa, authorities urged people to stay home statewide. A fatal wreck just east of Des Moines closed Interstate 80 in both directions Saturday, the State Patrol said, and poor visibility and a 40-vehicle pileup closed an 80-mile stretch of Interstate 35 in northern Iowa.

The wind is “going to pick up all the loose snow and throw it about, and that’s going to produce near-whiteout conditions, especially in the rural areas,” said Jeff Johnson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Johnston, Iowa. “We have enough ammunition sitting on the ground out there to give us enough blowing snow that will last forever.”

Some travelers were stranded in heavy drifting snow along highways in eastern North Dakota, said Highway Patrol Sgt. Lori Malafa.

“Our troopers are unable to get to the vehicles,” Malafa said. “We just don’t have the manpower or capability to reach them.”

South Dakota highways remained open, but people were told to stay home. “The troopers who are out can barely move because they can barely see,” said Capt. Warren Anderson of the South Dakota Highway Patrol.

Northwest Airlines canceled all flights at Sioux Falls, S.D. However, Northwest said operations were close to normal at its hubs at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

United and American airlines canceled hundreds of Saturday flights at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in anticipation of freezing rain, poor visibility, snow and gusting wind, but by Saturday afternoon meteorologists said the worst weather was missing the area.