Travel conditions in the northern Plains will drastically improve Wednesday after a deadly storm that caused blizzard conditions and freezing rain, resulting in disruptions along major interstates in the central U.S.
The storm claimed a life in Kansas when an elderly woman died in a crash along a snowy state highway on Christmas evening.
The driver of a pickup truck heading west on Kansas Highway 156 lost control on the icy road and slid into oncoming traffic, colliding head-on with an eastbound SUV near Larned, according to the Kansas Highway Patrol. An 86-year-old woman riding in the SUV was pronounced dead at the scene, troopers said. Three others were hospitalized.
Ice in Merrick County, Nebraska, caused another driver to lose control and the car to roll over several times, officials said. A child was ejected from the car and was rushed to a trauma center. Five others in the car were rushed to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to the sheriff.
Snow and high winds forced the Nebraska DOT to close Interstate 80 and Highway 30 from the Wyoming line to Lexington, Nebraska. The state saw 28 crashes and almost 150 weather-related incidents on Christmas alone. I-80 was fully opened late Wednesday morning, but Highway 30 remained closed.
“I was still getting some crashes out in western Nebraska. That’s the reason we closed down the interstate,” Nebraska State Patrol Lieutenant Kyle Diefenbaugh told FOX Weather on Tuesday. “Mostly due to blowing snow. Wind gusts up to about 50 miles an hour are blowing across the road and making icy patches. And some of our travelers just are slowing down and causing wrecks. So we had to shut down the interstate and try to get those cleaned up.”
Blizzard conditions also led to several other crashes and, at times, additional closed roads and interstates in Kansas, Colorado, North Dakota and South Dakota, thanks to blinding snow and high winds.
In addition to Interstate 80’s closure, state transportation officials in Colorado and Kansas temporarily closed Interstate 70 from Goodland, Kansas, west to just east of Denver, Colorado, on Tuesday morning due to safety concerns. The interstate has since reopened. Parts of Interstate 90 also had temporary closures during the storm through South Dakota.
So far, snow totals in Nebraska have topped 10 inches in a handful of cities. With wind gusts to 60 mph, as reported in Sidney, drivers faced white-out conditions. The storm’s top wind gust came in Rapid City, South Dakota at 73 mph, just one mph shy of hurricane-force.
“Motorists should not use secondary highways to avoid Interstate closures,” South Dakota Department of Transportation officials posted Monday on the agency’s website.
In North Dakota, it wasn’t just snow and wind, but freezing rain that forced the North Dakota Highway Patrol to close Interstate 29 from Grand Forks northward to the Canadian border Tuesday, with many area roads completely ice-covered. On Wednesday, I-29 opened from Fargo to the Canadian border, but a travel alert remains in effect for the Grand Forks and Fargo areas.
Freezing rain was reported in Fargo, Grand Forks and Bismarck, though the worst of the freezing rain was in southeastern North Dakota where a few towns west of Fargo along the Interstate 94 corridor saw up to an inch of ice accretion over the past two days.
Trees and power lines toppled in Chaffee and cars, including a sheriff’s deputy, were reported spun out into ditches in the town of Ashley. The freezing rain threat has since abated.
Blizzard conditions will continue across parts of the Dakotas and Nebraska, where an additional 3-plus inches of snowfall will be possible through Wednesday before the winter precipitation finally ends.