3,500 flights canceled as United States hit by winter storm

A major winter storm battered the American Northern Plains and Upper Midwest with high winds and heavy snow on Wednesday, forcing hundreds of schools to close, grounding air travel and making road travel difficult in wide swaths of the US.

Few places were untouched by the wild weather, including some at the opposite extreme: long-standing record highs were broken in cities in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Southeast, US authorities and news agencies reported.

More than 50 million Americans were under winter weather advisories on Wednesday as the storm moved across a wide swath of the western and northern United States and into the East. Up to 2 feet (60 cm) of snow and winds of up to 60 miles (97 km) an hour were expected in some spots during the day and into Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

The storm wreaked havoc on morning air travel. Some 3,500 flights were delayed or canceled across the nation, according to Flightaware.com. Travelers in Chicago’s O’Hare airport faced delays and cancellations.

The storm also produced a band of freezing rain stretching from central Iowa through Chicago and into southern Michigan, coating roads, trees and power lines with up to a 1/4 inch (0.6 cm) of ice, the weather service's Pereira said.

Snow-covered roads also will make travel treacherous in the Upper Midwest, and ice-covered power lines and falling trees could cause power outages late on Wednesday and into Thursday, said Frank Pereira, a forecaster with the weather service's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Experts say the growing frequency and intensity of such storms, interspersed with extreme heat and dry spells, are symptoms of climate change. While the East Coast has experienced a relatively mild winter, the Northern Plains has experienced an extreme winter in terms of snowfall and temperatures, according to the weather service.

Among the hardest-hit cities in the Midwest was Minneapolis, where some 20 inches (50 cm) of snow and 45-mph (72-kph) winds were expected to create whiteouts.

Local officials declared emergencies in Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul, and motorists were told not to be out on the roads.

Minneapolis' school system said it would hold classes remotely for more than 29,000 pupils for the rest of the week. Dozens of school districts canceled classes in the Dakotas, Colorado and Wyoming.