A one-two winter storm punch that started Friday – stretching from Montana through the Rockies, Plains and upper Midwest – will dump more snow and freezing rain through much of the northern tier of country this weekend.
The Weather Channel reported that a "strung-out impulse of energy riding though a broad southward drip in the jet stream" was helping create system that nearly stretched from coast-to-coast.
The storm's first snow blitz hit the Great Lakes and northern High Plains on Friday. A second long swath of snow is expected to spread from the Rockies and Plains to the Midwest and Northeast over the weekend, TWC said.
The National Weather Service said heavy snow is forecast to move into upstate New York and New England by early Saturday, Reuters reported.
Harve, Montana was slammed with 13 inches of snow over a 30-hour period while freezing rain across parts of the state Thursday created difficult traveling conditions. The Chicago area absorbed six inches of snow with another four inches in Milwaukee and up to two inches in Detroit, the broadcaster said.
"The Friday morning rush is gonna be trouble," National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Mott had told the Chicago Tribune. He was right.
Chicago Public Schools and hundreds of other schools in the region all closed Friday because of the storm, and Chicago O'Hare International Airport and Chicago Midway International Airport announced that cancelation of hundreds of flights, per the Tribune.
FlightAware.com, which tracks airline traffic, said about 1,050 U.S. flights were canceled, with about one in five flights into or out of Chicago and Detroit airports called off, per Reuters.
Winter storm warnings were issued by the National Weather Service for parts of northwest Ohio, southern Lower Michigan, northern Indiana, northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and eastern Iowa, where show is expected to be the heaviest.
The Des Moines Register reported that three to seven inches of snow fell in northern Iowa Friday morning. Kurt Kotenberg, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Des Moines, told the Register that most of the snow fall in the morning hours fell along Highway 20.
Fort Dodge reported nine inches of snow, while Waterloo took another six inches.
In Michigan, forecasters were predicting six to nine inches this weekend for Detroit's Wayne County and Ann Arbor's Washtenaw County, according to the Detroit Free Press. Some four to seven inches is being predicted in the suburbs of Macomb and Oakland counties.
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