Maps in the News

A large, powerful autumn snowstorm slowly moved out of Colorado Thursday and trudged toward Nebraska and Kansas, causing blizzard-like conditions on the eastern plains and leaving in its wake treacherous roads and hundreds of canceled flights. The storm dropped more than 3 feet of snow in areas of the foothills west of Denver and closed schools and businesses. Roads across the region remained snowpacked and icy, shutting down the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in western South Dakota. "Big storms like these, they seem to come around every 10 to 12 years," said a National Weather Service meteorologist. The storm also spread a blanket of white from northern Utah's Wasatch Front to western Nebraska's northern border with South Dakota. Denver-based Frontier Airlines said it canceled 19 flights in and out of Denver, and some flights were delayed by up to four hours at Denver International Airport. United Airlines, the dominant carrier at the Denver airport with about 400 flights per day, canceled about half its flights to prevent delays and cancelations from spilling over into the next day. An airport spokesman said crews were using 174 pieces of snow-removal equipment to keep runways and taxiways clear as they dealt with severe wind gusts. The area around the airport received between 11 and 16 inches of snow, the weather service said. As the storm moved toward the nation's central plains, eastern Colorado bared the brunt of its tail end, causing the Colorado Department of Transportation to close Interstate 70 from an area near Denver to Burlington, which is about 15 miles from the Kansas border. Other road closures included a 40-mile stretch of Interstate 80 from Cheyenne to Laramie; and a 35-mile span of Interstate I-25 from Wellington to Cheyenne; and I-80 west of Big Springs to Laramie, Wyo., a stretch spanning almost 200 miles. Whiteout conditions were forecast Thursday for plains of Wyoming and western Nebraska, where 12 inches of snow were reported in Rushville and 11 inches in nearby Clinton. Three-foot drifts were reported elsewhere in western Nebraska. The storm that began Tuesday already added enough snow to break records for total snowfall in October for Wyoming. It was the biggest October snowmaker in the Denver area since 1997, said a National Weather Service hydrologist in Boulder, Colo.