Rockies blasted; tornado reports in the Midwest
DES MOINES, Iowa — A storm system moved east into several Midwest states Wednesday, bringing strong winds, large hail and reports of tornadoes, after initially dumping a foot of snow on the Rockies.
The National Weather Service said the system carried thunderstorms into parts of Iowa and northern Missouri and was expected to linger in those states for several more hours before heading farther east.
“The large-scale weather system is behaving pretty much as we would have expected it,” said Rich Thompson, lead forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
Thompson said that meant thunderstorms, large hail and damaging winds of up to 60 mph in some areas, particularly in a region southwest of Des Moines and northeast of Kansas City.
His office had received reports of tornadoes, but he said they could not be verified until survey teams were sent to the affected areas, which included a county in southeast Nebraska and two counties in southwest Iowa.
“It looks like the threat for damaging winds and occasional tornadoes will peak here over the couple of hours as this moves along the I-35 corridor and maybe a little bit east of that,” he said. “Overall, it’s pretty much going according to plan.”
Thompson said there were some reports of damage to buildings in Adams County, Iowa, the site of one of the reported tornadoes. He said officials were still gathering information.
The same storm system packed blizzard-like conditions for portions of Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas, the weather service said.
The system had been expected to affect more than 36.5 million people from Colorado through Ohio, and from Texas north through Michigan. At one point, the weather service had tornado watches issued for parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. The main threats remained for parts of Iowa and northern Missouri.
The storm dropped up to about 5 inches in parts of the Denver area on Wednesday, and Colorado highway patrol troopers reported several crashes north of the city on windy, icy Interstate 25 near the Wyoming border before the sun came out. Wyoming authorities also shut down large sections of roadways.
The Nebraska State Patrol reported several minor accidents involving vehicles sliding off icy or slushy roadways, but no injuries were reported.
At Denver International Airport, spokesman Heath Montgomery said airlines canceled about 50 flights in anticipation of the bad weather — out of the airport’s 1,500 daily flights — and ground crews kept up with the snowfall. No major delays were reported.