Winter storm scrambles U.S. Thanksgiving travel
MINNEAPOLIS — A day after bringing havoc to the Rocky Mountains, a powerful winter storm rolled across the Midwest on Wednesday, threatening to scramble U.S. Thanksgiving plans for millions of people during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.
The storm, which was blamed for one death and hundreds of cancelled flights, pushed east into South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. It dropped close to 30 centimetres of snow in some areas, even as the system weakened and headed toward New York and Pennsylvania.
But the West was not free of heavy weather. A “bomb cyclone” caused by a rapid drop in air pressure brought snow to the mountains and wind and rain along the California and Oregon coasts. Drivers on Interstate 5 near the Oregon-California border spent 17 hours or more in stopped traffic as blizzard conditions whirled outside. Some slept in their vehicles.
“It’s one of those things, you couldn’t make it up if you tried,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brent Hewett said of back-to-back storms forming around the holiday.
Christina Williams and her 13-year-old son, who live in Portland, Oregon, got stuck in the storm as they tried to drive to the San Francisco area for Thanksgiving. Williams said she and other stranded drivers connected on Twitter using weather-related hashtags and began to communicate to find out what conditions were like in other parts of the backup.
“There were spinouts everywhere. There were trucks that were abandoned. And every time we stopped and started moving again, there were people who couldn’t start moving again,” Williams said. “Every time we stopped I was like: ‘Is this it? Are we going to be here overnight?’ ”
It took more than 17 hours to reach Redding, California, where they got a hotel room, she said.
Snow and downed trees and power lines closed roads. Others were reduced to a single lane, transportation officials said.
Interstate 5, which runs parallel to the coast, was expected to be open in both directions later Wednesday. The southbound lanes at Ashland, Oregon, reopened earlier in the day. The northbound lanes from California were scheduled to open by late afternoon.