Wild weather hits Northwest; Midwest gets taste of summer
BOSTON >> February's end is bringing wild weather to much of the United States, with record heat allowing for golf in Wisconsin and outdoor food trucks in Minnesota, along with an increased fire risk across much of the Great Plains. But blinding snow in the Northwest is blowing eastward, and places like Chicago should see temperatures swinging dramatically from balmy to bitter cold again.
“Definitely not the weather we would expect in February. It's usually super snowy, freezing, you know, ice everywhere. And so we are just trying to take advantage of a very nice week this week,” said Tania Sepulveda, a 30-yearold Chicago therapist who was “working from home” Monday, using her laptop in a grassy spot along the Lake Michigan shoreline.
The sunny weather won't last that long. A powerful storm started dumping snow that could reach several feet in higher elevations of the West promises a return of winter conditions to the central U.S., where it's been unseasonably warm. High winds are already blowing, raising the risk of wildfires across the Great Plains.
The National Weather Service warned that travel could be dangerous later Monday across parts of the Oregon Cascades and Northern Rockies, predicting nearblizzard conditions with one to two inches of snow an hour and winds reaching upwards of 65 mph.
The storm will move into the Great Basin and Central Rockies Tuesday, carrying much colder temperatures and strong winds across the inner mountain West, said Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland. “We'll be very wintry like for the next two days,” he added.
Warm conditions have brought temperatures reaching into the 60s in Denver, Chicago and Des Moines, Iowa. Kansas City, Missouri, enjoyed temperatures in the mid-70s.
Warmer temperatures have brought increased risk of fires across the Great Plains.
The National Weather Service said dry, gusty winds were creating what it called critical fire weather conditions, and issued red flag warnings and fire weather watches in parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, up to Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and east to Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.
Nearby states, including parts of Arkansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin, were under hazardous weather outlooks because of an increased fire danger, according to weather service maps. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued an advisory Monday morning discouraging burning anything outdoors, noting that 15 wildfires sprang up over the weekend, consuming more than 30 acres.