Snow Batters Rockies and Plains; Highways Blocked

A wintry storm dumped up to two feet of wet snow on the Rockies and northern plains Tuesday, forcing motorists to abandon cars on blocked roads and sending temperatures plummeting across the Northwest.

“We’re blocked in solid here,” said Wells County, N.D., Sheriff Curtis Pellett. “We’ve got the highways plugged with cars.”

Trees and power lines snapped under the weight of the snow, he said.

“You expect this in December, but not now,” Pellet said. “This is going to do a number on the small grain crops.”

For North Dakota grain farmers, it was another bad day in a miserable month.

‘Same Rainy, Wet Story’

“It’s the same rainy, wet story that has been told for the last six weeks,” said Dan Dhuyvetter, Burke County agent in Bowbells, N.D. “There is a good 50% of the grain crop left unharvested.

“We have a lot of standing grain, and the weight of the snow is starting to pull it down to the ground. Even if we do get some good weather from now on, I think we’ll still be leaving quite a bit of crop in the fields.”

Travelers’ advisories were posted in parts of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Minnesota as well as in North Dakota, where winds up to 35 m.p.h. were blowing the snow into drifts Tuesday afternoon.

The storm, which dropped 25 inches of snow at Shonkin, Mont., and two feet at Mosquito Spring, Ida., drifted south. Travelers’ advisories were posted for northeast Nevada and the Lake Tahoe area, gale warnings were in effect for the western Great Lakes and snow was falling Tuesday afternoon from the northern plains to the central Rockies.

In Minnesota, the storm knocked out power and sent cars sliding into ditches in the Roseau area, where 8 inches of snow fell.

“The heat is gone. We have no lights,” said Pam Grahn, a Roseau resident. “But the mosquitoes are gone.”

In northern Utah, where accumulations reached 18 inches, roads were clearing Tuesday. The storm, which had peak wind gusts of 81 m.p.h. Monday at Rawlins, Wyo., also dusted parts of South Dakota, Oregon and Idaho with snow.

Record cold temperatures were reported in 16 cities from Eugene, Ore., to Montana, with Great Falls, Mont., posting a low of 12 degrees. That knocked six degrees off the record for the date set in 1966.

Cut Bank, Mont., was the nation’s coldest spot Tuesday at 8 degrees.

Northwestern Wyoming was digging out of six inches of snow that closed three of Yellowstone National Park’s five entrances, although two were reopened late Tuesday.