Kealamauloa blog

Bitter cold, destruction in wake of mammoth storm

CHICAGO – A mammoth winter storm left dangerously slick roads and frigid Midwestern temperatures in its frozen footprint Thursday after crushing snow-laden buildings in the Northeast.

At least two people were killed when the pickup truck they were in drove off a snow-covered Oklahoma interstate and plunged 80 feet into an icy river. Wind chills dipped to nearly 30 below in parts of the nation's midsection as the region began dealing with the storm's aftermath.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley spoke publicly for the first time to defend his city's handling of the storm that stranded hundreds of motorists as if caught in a prairie blizzard on the city's showcased Lake Shore Drive. In a city known for punishing politicians for winter weakness, the retiring Daley said when pressed that he wouldn't have handled anything differently and that workers responded well.

"Yes, they did ... They did a very, very good job," Daley said. Lake Shore reopened before dawn Thursday.

The sprawling system unloaded as much as 2 feet of snow across its 2,000-mile path, crippling airports and stranding drivers from Texas to South Dakota, where authorities rescued some motorists from more than 150 vehicles that had become trapped overnight after high winds sent fallen snow drifting onto an interstate in the northeast part of the state. Icy roads were blamed for a 15-vehicle chain-reaction crash in southeastern Louisiana that resulted in a few minor injuries.

Even the sunny Southwest wasn't spared: Freezing temperatures delayed Thursday's opening round of the Phoenix Open in Scottsdale, Ariz., and led to school closures in parts of New Mexico.

A two-man state transportation crew looking for trouble spots along New Mexico's snowpacked U.S. 54 rescued a family of four who had been stranded in their upside down car for up to an hour in a 30-foot ravine.

Authorities in northeast Oklahoma said the pickup truck that drove into the Spring River on Thursday jumped a guard rail on Interstate 44 at about 6:30 a.m., carrying five to eight people, and was partially submerged. It was not immediately clear how many people died in the crash.

Ottawa County Sheriff Terry Durborow said three people died, but the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said only two died. The discrepancy could not immediately be resolved.

Harsh weather conditions made rescue attempts difficult.

"The rescue teams got a small boat, hoisted it down in the water and started the recovery," said Lt. George Brown, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Highway Department. "The ground temperature was 11 degrees below zero, so it would take second to become hypothermic in this water and ice."

The week's storm had rendered the interstate impassable earlier in the week and the lane in which the pickup was driving hadn't reopened until late Wednesday. Brown declined to speculate about whether the highway was re-opened prematurely.

In the Northeast, officials had warned homeowners and businesses for days of the dangers of leaving snow piled up on rooftops. As the storm cloaked the region in ice and added inches to the piles of snow already settled across the landscape, the predictions came true. No one was seriously injured, however.

In Middletown, Conn., the entire third floor of a building failed, littering the street with bricks and snapping two trees. A gas station canopy on New York's Long Island collapsed, as did an airplane hangar near Boston, damaging aircraft. Roof cave-ins also were reported in Rhode Island.

Some places in the Northeast that have gotten more snow so far this winter than they usually get the whole season are running out of places to put it. In Portland, Maine, the downtown snow-storage area was expected to reach capacity after this week's storm — the first time in three years that has happened.

Snow totals in the Northeast hit their peak at several inches in New England, a far cry from the foot or more the region has come to expect with each passing storm in a season full of them. Meanwhile, the Midwest was reeling from the storm's wallop as the system swept eastward.

Chicago's 20.2 inches of snow was the city's third-largest amount on record.

The system was blamed for more than a dozen deaths before Thursday, including a homeless man who burned to death on Long Island as he tried to light cans of cooking fuel and a woman in Oklahoma City who was killed while being pulled behind a truck on a sled that hit a guard rail.

Airport operations slowed to a crawl nationwide, though Chicago aviation officials said operations resumed Thursday at major hub O'Hare International and the smaller Midway International. The Chicago Department of Aviation said there were no initial delays, but cancellations continued. O'Hare reported about 1,000 cancellations and Midway more than 30.

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Associated Press writers Sue Major Holmes in Albuquerque, N.M.; John Christoffersen in Milford, Conn. and Michael Hill in Albany, N.Y. contributed to this report.