Guest post by Paul Homewood
Posted on 03/24/2013 9:20:52 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
(Reuters) - A major early spring storm brought heavy snow, severe thunderstorms and floods as it moved east across the United States on Saturday, closing highways, forcing flight cancellations and causing a pileup involving dozens of vehicles.
The weather system forced the cancellations of more than 100 flights in and out of Denver International Airport on Saturday and blowing and drifting snow closed several roads in Colorado, including Interstate 70 in both directions east of Denver to the Kansas state line.
"Travel on the eastern plains is strongly discouraged," said Mindy Crane, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation. "It is snowing half an inch an hour with sustained winds of 25 miles an hour with gusts up to 40 miles an hour."
A chain-reaction crash involving some 50 vehicles and at least four tractor-trailers shut down Interstate 25 about 30 miles north of Denver for several hours on Saturday, the Colorado State Patrol said in a statement. A tanker involved in the accident burst into flames.
Several injured people were taken to the hospital but no fatalities were reported, police said.
Kyle Fredin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said some counties in far eastern Colorado had seen a foot of snow by mid-afternoon.
Snowfall accumulations in the Denver metropolitan area could top 10 inches, with higher amounts in the foothills west of the city, he said.
The snow was expected to move east to Kansas City, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio, over the next 24 hours, before moving into the mid-Atlantic states, Kines said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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“I’m sick of snow.’
Not me. The St. Vrain basin in Colorado is only at 65% average snowpack right now. Colorado is in the second year of a (presumably) 3-year drought, which starts like clockwork every 11 years due to the sunspot cycle.
We could use a few more feet of snow here.
Crap...I’m in Chicago visiting family for the weekend & need to fly back to Pittsburgh late this afternoon!!! Hope I have a safe & smooth flight! Yikes!
Our driveway on 2/9/13:
The snow dam at the end of our driveway was five feet high and about 10 feet deep. This is part of the driveway:
We're had a number of snowstorms since then.
That 5-8 prediction for DC (or near DC) is totally wrong. There may be a slushy coating at Dulles. Zero at Reagan National.
i think they’ve even claimed that the cold weather is caused by global warming.
So we’d better stop “global warming” to stop all this freezing?
Oh my.. more ‘proof’ of global varming.. jaaa.
What state is this in?
I’m in the Pacific Northwest and this year - for the first time in a long time - not one icy road day - however had small amounts of snow that didn’t last long.
Yeap, St. Vrain and the Big Thompson are running low. So the municipalities are already getting ready to enforce water restrictions and cutting farmers off. Stupid stuff here, they don’t let farmers use well water to irrigate, and we owe Kansas water, so we cut our farmers off, destroying their crops.
Oh noes. There is a BIG purple blob over my house.
Damn that Groundhog:-/
That wreck on I25 was just north of my house. We drove through this morning. Roads are dry and clear, but the snow in the median and between the interstate and frontage road shows the mess for miles.
I live in Massachusetts.
I understand that last summer was a disaster due to drought for many farmers in the west and midwest.
So what is really sad about it, is that the water table is really high here. We have to run sump pumps on our basements/crawlspaces. But, we can use well water. Bunch of fools gone mad.
correction: Can’t use well water.
It’s nutty.
Man, you are in the woods.
That looks like a beautiful piece of land, Trisha.
I wish I lived in that kind of environment.
‘Pod.
I assume it came down the usual way ....from the Alaska area.
We have been chilly but that is all.
There has been global cooling the past week or two. The global average temperature dropped at least 1/2 degree C (that’s about the sum total of “global warming” from CO2 so far).
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