Severe Weather Sweeps Across U.S. with Snow, Floods, and High Winds

A broad and erratic patchwork of severe weather rumbled across much of the U.S. on Sunday, dumping heavy snow and making roads impassable in the Upper Midwest while damaging high winds swept across the Plains. Hawaii continued to be affected by severe flooding. And portions of the mid-South readied for late-day thunderstorms. Forecasters said the storms would spread eastward by Monday, with mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C., at greatest risk for high winds and tornadoes. Successive punches of snow, wind and severe weather were set to impact the eastern half of the United States, said AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tyler Roys. Beyond the threat to lives and property, “whether it’s wind gusts from a squall line, blizzard or snow, or just wind because of the storm, you’re looking at several major airports being impacted,” Roy said. An area from central Wisconsin to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was likely to see over 2 feet (60 centimeters) of snow, with higher isolated totals on the peninsula, Roys said. Lower snow accumulations in places such as Chicago and Milwaukee will likely create trouble for commuters on Monday, he added. Over 20 inches (51 centimeters) of snow fell in some portions of southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin as of Sunday afternoon, according to National Weather Service reports. Transportation officials warned of worsening conditions with low visibility and snow-covered roadways. Wisconsin snowplow driver Aaron Haas said it was one of the worst storms he had seen in years. On Sunday around the town of Marshfield, Haas was stacking piles of snow as high as his truck. “You can’t see anything when you’re on the highways outside of the city,” he said. Jim Allen, 45, who lives on the Upper Peninsula, said his family stocked up on necessities and he was ready to clear snow several times Sunday with a shovel and snowblower. “We’re basically prepared to just kind of hunker down for a few days if we need to,” Allen said. More than 600 flights were canceled at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport Sunday, according to FlightAware, which tracks flight disruptions. Dozens more through Detroit were also scrapped. O’Hare and Midway international airports in Chicago, where rain and snow was expected overnight into Monday, reported more than 850 cancellations. Rain continued falling on Sunday in Hawaii, where acres of farmland and homes have been flooded, roads have been closed and shelters opened. PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide, reported almost 40,000 electric customers in Hawaii without power by midday Sunday. Flash flooding has been a major problem in recent days in places like Maui, Molokai and the Big Island, where rain had been falling from 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) an hour overnight, according to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. Some areas of Maui received more than 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said in a social media post late Saturday. “We’re seeing flooding, landslides, sinkholes, debris and downed power lines across the county,” he said. Expressing gratitude in the Hawaiian language, the mayor added, “mahalo for continuing to look out for one another.” Video footage with Bissen’s post showed washed out or collapsed roads, a car stuck by floodwaters and raging waterways. National Guard members and fire department workers made multiple floodwater rescues, Bissen said. Tom and Carrie Bashaw said they could do little to prevent part of their home in Maui’s Iao Valley from collapsing beneath rising waters. On Friday, the water’s force starting overtaking nearby trees. “When we lost the mango and monkey pod, we started throwing stuff in bags and packing up,” Tom Bashaw told HawaiiNewsNow. They returned Saturday morning and “the whole backside of the house” was gone, he said. Maui resident and real estate broker Jesse Wald, who recorded video of a coastal road’s collapse Saturday, said other parts of road were flooded out by mud and sediment. “In the 20 years I’ve been here I’ve never seen this much rain,” Wald said. “I’m from Wisconsin and we get thunderstorms, you know pretty often in the summer, so it felt like a Wisconsin thunderstorm but times 10.” Maui County later on Sunday downgraded an evacuation notice and said crews were pumping water from retentions basins to keep them at safe levels. More than 210,000 utility customers in six Great Lakes states were without electricity as of Sunday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us. Some originated on Friday when gusts in the region reached 85 mph (137 km). In Nebraska, about 30 National Guard members were deployed to combat multiple wildfires across a broad swath of range and grassland, state officials said. Three of the largest wildfires had damaged more than 900 square miles (2,331 square kilometers) as of Saturday, officials said. One fire-related fatality was reported Friday. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen urged residents to follow locally-issued evacuation orders, adding that winds were “supposed to be extraordinary.” The weather service issued a high-wind warning for most of Nebraska, with gusts of up to 60 mph (97 kph) possible amid falling snow. Roys said high winds would affect a region stretching from the U.S.-Mexico border to the Great Lakes, and from Denver eastward to the Appalachian Mountains. The weather service warned that a line of severe storms with damaging winds would cross much of the Eastern U.S. by late Monday. It was to begin Sunday afternoon and cross the Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio valleys. The storm threat was expected to enter the Appalachians early Monday, then move toward the East Coast, where “severe thunderstorms with widespread damaging winds and several tornadoes” were expected Monday, the service said. A stretch from parts of South Carolina to Maryland appeared most likely to experience the greatest damaging winds Monday afternoon, the weather service said. That could include Raleigh, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia, and the nation’s capital. It said an increased — albeit much lower — risk stretched north to New York and south to Florida, with thunderstorms possible in New England. Officials said schools in Raleigh and Chapel Hill, North Carolina would be closed Monday and the state’s governor urged residents to enable emergency alerts on their phones ahead of expected wind gusts of 74 mph (119 kph).