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Severe weather sweeps through Midwest as Denver digs out

March 24, 2016

A person works to dig out a vehicle stuck in the middle of Jennings Street in Sioux City, Iowa’s, north side early Thursday morning, March 24, 2016. A spring snow storm dropped about 14-inches of snow in Sioux City according to the National Weather Service. (Tim Hynds/Sioux City Journal via AP)

DENVER (AP) — Severe weather including hail and reports of at least one tornado were reported in the Midwest as other areas began digging out of a spring blizzard that shut down the Denver airport, closed hundreds of miles of roads and left cars stranded along highways on the Plains.

Several homes were damaged or destroyed and injuries were reported in northwest Arkansas after storms swept through the area around midnight Wednesday. Two people were taken to a Fort Smith hospital with severe injuries, then flown to a Tulsa hospital, the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office said.

A tornado touched down on the southeast side of Lake Charles in Louisiana, damaging one home, the National Weather Service confirmed Thursday.

In northern Texas, authorities said a hailstorm broke windows in homes and vehicles. Parts of Denton and Collin counties were blanketed with hail Wednesday night, with some stones the size of golf balls.

In Wisconsin, forecasters predicted another 1 to 4 inches of snow would fall across most of the state Thursday. In Minnesota, snow was still falling and the Minnesota Department of Transportation discouraged travel in some areas.

Denver International Airport reopened Wednesday evening. But by then, most of the day’s flights had already been canceled, leaving people to sleep on the floor there or return home and come back and wait to try to get on another flight during an already busy spring break travel week.

Alicia Bailey was headed back to Atlanta after a business trip in Colorado Springs. She had a treacherous, white-knuckle, four-hour drive to the airport Wednesday only to learn her flight was delayed several times and finally canceled.

“I had a nice little cocktail, and that calmed the nerves down because I was frazzled,” she said. “The way I look at it is, it’s all God’s work. You have to look at the glass half full. I can’t change it, so I’m just going to tell my boss, ‘I’ll see you on Friday.’”

The storm also brought heavy and blowing snow to parts of Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Up to a foot of snow fell in the southern Twin Cities, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called members of the National Guard to active duty to help local authorities.

Drivers in northwestern Iowa and southeastern South Dakota also were warned to avoid travel because some roadways were still blocked by vehicles that got stuck in the blowing snow that fell Wednesday.

Forecasters with the National Weather Service said snow accumulations in South Dakota ranged from fewer than 2 inches in Sioux Falls to up to 7 inches north of Humboldt, while gusts reached between 40 mph to 45 mph.

“It’s pretty common that we see a couple of big storms in March, certainly not unheard of in this neck of the woods, but it is a high amount,” weather service meteorologist Kerry Hanko said.

Earlier, in Colorado and Wyoming, the wind and heavy, wet snow typical for a spring storm weighed down power lines and snapped them into one another, causing outages and flickering lights.

The storm mainly hit the eastern, flat halves of those states before moving farther east. The snow shut down long stretches of Interstates 25, 70 and 80 in Wyoming and Colorado on Wednesday, but they were back open Thursday, except for portions of I-70 in eastern Colorado.

Even politics had to take a snow day in Wyoming as Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and former President Bill Clinton canceled campaign events in the state.