Massive storm freezes U.S.

A huge storm spread ice and snow from the Rockies to the Northeast yesterday, snarling highway and airline traffic, causing record-low temperatures in the Midwest and snapping power lines serving tens of thousands of people.

The snow, sleet and freezing rain were part of a mass of cold air that dropped the temperature to a Jan. 5 record low of minus-39 in Grand Forks, N.D. Embarrass, Minn., hit minus-43, the National Weather Service said.

School closings were reported from New Mexico to New Jersey, and hundreds of travelers were stranded across the country.

"People have been sleeping on the floor. Nobody has had anything to eat. It's filthy in here," said Ken Wagner, who was stuck in Denver's Greyhound station for more than 15 hours when the company decided to keep its buses off the icy roads.

Up to an inch of ice coated the Kansas City area, and half-inch layers glazed highways in Iowa, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, causing traffic accidents.

Snow was scattered from the Colorado Rockies — which received 20 inches in 12 hours at Aspen — across the Plains and Great Lakes all the way into parts of New England, where 6 inches was possible by this morning, the weather service said. The same system had dumped up to 3 feet of snow in the mountains around Los Angeles this week.

Weather-related traffic deaths included two in Oklahoma and one each in Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota and Indiana. The weather also may have been a contributing factor in a collision that killed five more people in Oklahoma and two in Michigan.

A search resumed yesterday for two people who had been in a car that was found washed into a creek in Missouri, and one man was missing after an Arizona flash flood that killed another man.

Airlines canceled 590 flights yesterday at O'Hare International Airport and other flights were delayed up to three hours, Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Kristen Cabanban said. Kansas City, Mo., and Des Moines, Iowa, also had delays and cancellations.

Snow accumulations of about a foot were possible by today in parts of Michigan, South Dakota, Illinois and Iowa, where wind gusting to 25 mph caused drifting.

Thick ice that coated trees and utility poles led to tens of thousands of power outages across a wide swath of the Plains and Midwest, including Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Indiana.

Westar Energy in Kansas said it could be up to a week before it can restore service to nearly 100,000 customers.

Amid the travel problems and power outages, some people welcomed the storm.

"I didn't think the snow would ever come," said Alex Schulte, a 14-year-old snowboarding enthusiast in Sioux Falls, S.D., which received its first significant snowfall of the season at 4-1/2 inches. "Snow is snow. I don't know what to say about it, but I love it."