chicago — A wide and irregular mixture of Severe weather Tornadoes tore through much of the United States on Sunday, dumping heavy snow and making roads impassable in the upper Midwest while high winds lashed the Plains.
Hawaii continued to be affected by severe flooding.
Parts of the mid-South braced for thunderstorms late in the day.
Forecasters said the storms will spread eastward by Monday, with the mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C., most at risk from high winds and tornadoes.
Snow, wind and severe weather are expected to affect the eastern half of the United States, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tyler Ruiz said.
Besides the threat to life and property, “whether it’s winds blowing from a squall line or a blizzard or snow, or just winds from a storm, you’re looking at several major airports that are affected,” Roy said.
Royce said the area from central Wisconsin to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula will likely see more than 2 feet (60 cm) of snow, with snow totals on the Peninsula rising. He added that reduced snow accumulation in places like Chicago and Milwaukee will likely cause problems for commuters on Monday.
More than 20 inches (51 cm) of snow had fallen in some parts of southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin as of Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service reports. Transport officials warned of worsening conditions with low visibility and roads covered in snow.
Aaron Haas, a snowplow driver in Wisconsin, said it was one of the worst storms he had seen in years. On Sunday around the town of Marshfield, Haas was piling piles of snow as high as his truck.
“You can’t see anything when you’re on the highways outside of town,” he said.
Jim Allen, 45, who lives in the Upper Peninsula, said his family stocked up on necessities and was prepared to shovel snow several times Sunday with a shovel and snowblower.
“We’re basically prepared to hunker down for a few days if we need to,” Allen said.
More than 600 flights were canceled at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport on Sunday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions. Dozens more were canceled across Detroit. O’Hare and Midway International Airports in Chicago, where rain and snow are expected overnight and into Monday, reported more than 850 flight cancellations.
rain Keep falling Sunday in Hawaii, where Acres of farmland and homes was flooded, Roads were closed Shelters were opened. PowerOutage.us, which tracks power outages across the country, reported that nearly 40,000 electric customers in Hawaii were without power as of midday Sunday.
Flash flooding has been a major problem in recent days in places like Maui, Molokai and the Big Island, where 2.5 to 5 centimeters of rain fell per hour overnight, according to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.
Some areas of Maui received more than 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain, Maui County Sheriff Richard Bessen said in a social media post late Saturday.
“We are seeing flooding, landslides, sinkholes, debris and downed power lines across the province,” he said. “mahalo for continuing to take care of each other,” the mayor added, expressing gratitude in Hawaiian.
Video footage with Besen’s post showed destroyed or collapsed roads, a car stuck in floodwaters and raging waterways. National Guard members and fire department workers made multiple floodwater rescues, Bissen said.
Tom and Carrie Bashaw said there was little they could do to prevent part of their home in Maui’s Iau Valley from collapsing under rising waters. On Friday, the force of the water began to overtake nearby trees.
“When we lost the mango pod and the monkey, we started throwing things in the bags and packing up,” Tom Bashaw He told HawaiiNewsNow. They returned Saturday morning and “the entire back of the house was gone,” he added.
Other parts of the road were covered in mud and sediment, said Jesse Wald, a Maui resident and real estate broker who recorded video of a coastal road collapsing on Saturday.
“In the 20 years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen this much rain,” Wald said. “I’m from Wisconsin and we get thunderstorms, you know, quite often in the summer, so it felt like a thunderstorm in Wisconsin but 10 times.”
Maui County later on Sunday lowered its evacuation notice level and said crews were pumping water from retention ponds to keep it at safe levels.
More than 210,000 utility customers in six states in the Great Lakes region were without power as of Sunday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us. Some of them originated on Friday when wind speeds in the area reached 85 mph (137 km).
In Nebraska, about 30 National Guard members were deployed to battle multiple wildfires across a wide swath of grasslands, state officials said.
Three of the largest wildfires had burned more than 900 square miles (2,331 square kilometers) as of Saturday, officials said. One fire-related death was reported Friday. Nebraska Governor Jim Palin urged residents to follow locally issued evacuation orders, adding that the winds “should be unusual.”
The weather service issued a high wind warning for much of Nebraska, with winds of up to 60 mph (97 km/h) possible amid the falling snow. Royce said the high winds will affect an area extending from the US-Mexico border to the Great Lakes, and from Denver east to the Appalachian Mountains.
The National Weather Service warned that a series of severe storms accompanied by damaging winds will cross much of the eastern United States by late Monday. It was scheduled to begin Sunday afternoon and cross the Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio valleys.
The storm threat is expected to enter the Appalachian region early Monday, then move toward the East Coast, where “severe thunderstorms with widespread damaging winds and several tornadoes” are expected on Monday, the service said.
The weather service said the area extending from parts of South Carolina to Maryland appeared to be most vulnerable to damaging winds Monday afternoon. This could include Raleigh, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia, is the nation’s capital. The increased risk — though much lower — extended north into New York and south into Florida, with thunderstorms possible in New England, she said.
Schools in Raleigh and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, will close on Monday, officials said, and the state’s governor urged residents to enable emergency alerts on their phones ahead of expected 74 mph (119 km/h) winds.
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Robertson reported from Raleigh, North Carolina. Associated Press writers Julie Walker in New York and Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, also contributed to this report.