Huge winter storm closes US highways, triggers rare blizzard warning in Southern California | Weather in the United States

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A severe winter storm closed interstate highways from Arizona to Wyoming on Wednesday, trapped drivers in cars, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and prompted Southern California’s first blizzard warning. for decades and the worst will not be over for several days.

Meanwhile, pockets of the southeast will cook, with record heat expected to extend to the mid-Atlantic, temperatures more than 40°F warmer than normal and creating weather that feels more like in June than in February, according to the National Weather Service.

California could experience the coldest conditions of the season this week, after being hammered by rain and snow earlier in the year, and even low-lying areas far into the southern part of the state could see dust .

It’s shaping up to be a very unusual event, climatologist Daniel Swain said during a virtual briefing on Tuesday morning, noting that low-level snow will extend from the Oregon border to the Mexican border, that’s just a matter of height.

For the first time since 1989, a blizzard warning was issued for mountains in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, in effect from 4 a.m. Thursday to 4 p.m. Saturday, the National Weather Service said.

Rescuers assess the damage after a large tree was blown into an apartment building during a winter storm in San Diego, Calif., on Wednesday. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

Extremely dangerous mountain conditions ahead, the National Weather Service said on Twitter, adding that travel in those areas would be a mess. The major snow event could potentially reach the foothills near Los Angeles, with several inches predicted even for elevations as low as 1,000 feet, the agency said.

Daytime temperatures in Southern California are unlikely to come out of the low to mid-50s and potentially damaging winds of up to 50 mph have been forecast along the central coast, with gusts of 70 mph possible in the mountains.

More torrents of rain are also in store for the already soggy state, which is still recovering from the onslaught of severe storms earlier this year. AccuWeather forecasters say the system’s churning could produce a month’s worth of rain and possibly twice that amount or more in some places, with the potential to trigger flash floods and debris flows.

The first of a pair of storms expected to hit the state already wreaked havoc in the northern part of the state Tuesday night, as strong winds downed power lines and toppled trees. As of Wednesday morning, more than 109,000 California customers were without power, according to PowerOutage.us.

Downed trees blocked major San Francisco Bay Area freeways during rush hour Tuesday night and seriously injured a one-year-old child, after a redwood tree crashed into a home in Boulder Creek , a community in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco, KTVU reported.

In the Pacific Northwest, high winds and heavy snowfall in the Cascade Mountains prevented search teams from reaching the bodies of three climbers killed in an avalanche on Washingtons Colchuck Peak over the weekend. The victims were identified Wednesday as Seong Cho, a 54-year-old Korean citizen from West Hartford, Connecticut; Jeannie Lee, a 60-year-old woman from Bayside, New York; and Yun Park, a 66-year-old man from Palisades Park, New Jersey, the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office said.

Two experts from the Northwest Avalanche Center were on the scene Wednesday to determine if conditions would permit a recovery attempt later this week, but they had not yet returned by Wednesday afternoon.

The winter mix has hit the northern United States hard, shutting down schools and offices and even shutting down the Minnesota legislature. Weather has contributed to more than 1,600 U.S. flight cancellations, according to tracking service FlightAware. More than 400 of them were to arrive or depart from Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport. More than 5,000 other flights have been delayed across the country.

Even in areas accustomed to cold conditions, officials have warned of the dangers of whiteout conditions, with the potential for historic snowfall in the Midwest.

More than 20 inches (50.8 cm) could accumulate in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, the National Weather Service said. The Minneapolis-St Paul area could see 2 feet or more of snow for the first time in over 30 years.

NWS meteorologist Frank Pereira said the system is expected to affect around 43 million people.

Police and rescue workers attempt to free vehicles from snow on Mountain View Parkway in Lehi, Utah on Wednesday. Photograph: George Frey/AFP/Getty Images

Temperatures could dip as low as -20F (-29C) on Thursday and as low as -25F (-32C) on Friday in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Wind chill can drop to -50F (-46C), said Grand Forks meteorologist Nathan Rick.

Wind gusts can reach 50 mph (80 km/h) in western and central Minnesota, bringing heavy blowing snow and snow drift with whiteout conditions in open areas, the weather service said.

Sometimes it’s physically impossible to keep up with Mother Nature, said North Dakota Highway Patrol Sergeant Wade Kadrmas.

Schools in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin were closed on Wednesday. Offices closed, as did the Minnesota legislature. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem closed state executive branch offices in several parts of the state. In Wyoming, virtually all roads were affected. Officials have warned that the closures could last for days.

The storm will head towards the east coast later in the week. Places that don’t get snow can have dangerous ice. Forecasters expect up to a half inch of ice in parts of southern Michigan, northern Illinois and some eastern states.

The potential ice storm worries power company officials. Nearly 1,500 line workers were ready to be deployed if the ice caused outages, said Matt Paul, executive vice president of distribution operations for Detroit-based DTE Electric. He said half an inch of ice could cause hundreds of thousands of outages.

More than 192,000 customers in Michigan and nearly 89,000 in Illinois were without power Wednesday night, according to PowerOutage.us.

In the southwest on Wednesday, a more than 200-mile stretch of Interstate 40 from central Arizona to the New Mexico line was closed due to wind gusts of up to 80 mph, as well only snow and rain. Thousands of people were without power in Arizona.

Few places in the country will be spared from the wild weather, as some areas are bracing for the opposite extreme. Record highs were predicted from the mid-Atlantic states to Florida, with some places expected to reach up to 40 degrees above normal.

While the highs in Virginia are hovering in the 80s, they will drop to single digits in Maine, the NWS noted in Wednesday’s forecast. According to meteorologist Frank Pereira, we could see record highs being set everywhere from Pittsburgh to as far south as Fort Myers, Florida.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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