Cold blast brings blanket of snow

PIERRE, S.D. – A blast of wintry weather blew into parts of the Rockies and Upper Midwest on Monday, bringing a foot of snow in some areas, along with plunging temperatures. The cold weather is expected to eventually blanket the central U.S. from the Rockies to the Great Lakes region.

A look at the storm and its effects:

By Monday afternoon, areas of northwest Montana saw 14 inches of snow; parts of North Dakota saw as much as 8 inches; a community in central Minnesota got more than 16 inches; some Wisconsin communities got a foot or more of snow; and parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula had 9 inches, with up to 2 feet expected by the time the storm ends.

Snow was welcome in northern Wyoming, where snow and arctic cold stopped a raging wildfire that had burned almost 2 square miles by Sunday evening. “That’s the best fire control you can have is Mother Nature,” said John Garman, a firefighter with Johnson County.

Elsewhere, the weather wasn’t so welcome. In Minnesota, the State Patrol said at least two people were killed in accidents on icy roads. Separately, a semitrailer slipped off Interstate 94 and overturned. In eastern Wisconsin, snow-covered roads were blamed for a school bus crash that sent the driver and an aide to a hospital, WBAY-TV reported.

The storm stirred anxiety for some farmers in Minnesota and South Dakota whose corn had not yet been harvested. The corn can withstand the cold, but deep snow may delay farmers getting it out of fields.

This week’s storm is part of a powerful system being pushed in by the remnants of Typhoon Nuri that hit Alaska’s sparsely populated Aleutian Islands.