Blizzard barrels through US Great Plains
DENVER: A “bomb cyclone” blizzard swept out of the Rockies into the Great Plains on Wednesday, leading the Colorado governor to activate the National Guard and prompting fears of more flooding in areas still recovering from a deluge last month.
Warm spring temperatures on Tuesday gave way to heavy snow, gale-force winds and life-threatening conditions on Wednesday across a swath of the central United States running from Colorado to Minnesota, the National Weather Service said.
“This is potentially a lifethreatening storm,” said Patrick Burke, a meteorologist with the NWS Weather Prediction Centre in Maryland.
In March, a late-winter “bomb cyclone,” which involves a rapidly intensifying cyclone, triggered heavy rainfall over the region and combined with melting snow to cause extensive flooding along the Missouri River and its tributaries. The deluge resulted in more than US$ 3 billion in damage to property and crops in Nebraska and Iowa alone.
This week’s storm also qualified as a bomb cyclone and could lead to further flooding, said Weather Prediction Centre meteorologist Marc Chenard.
Colorado saw a huge temperature swing, with the state capital of Denver basking in 30 degrees Celsius weather on Tuesday, before snow fell on the city on Wednesday and temperatures dropped minus 1 degrees Celsius, meteorologists said.
The slow-moving storm on Wednesday dumped snow on parts of Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota and Wisconsin, Chenard said by phone.
Some areas had already received more than 30cm of snow.
Officials in Colorado and South Dakota closed state offices on Wednesday and urged people in all areas affected by the blizzard to consider leaving work early.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis activated the National Guard, which planned to deploy 24 vehicles, including tactical trucks, for possible missions to rescue stranded people, the agency said in a statement. — Reuters