Snow, ice and howling winds hit a broad section of the central United States on Friday with a first-day-of-December punch that closed roads, disrupted air travel and left hundreds of thousand of people without power, according to Reuters. In St. Louis, the landmark Gateway Arch was closed because of treacherous ice coating the grounds. The governor of Kansas declared a state of emergency in more than two dozen hard-hit counties. Blizzard warnings were hoisted in Milwaukee and southeast Wisconsin, where more than 600 schools, businesses and government offices were closed. Winds across the U.S. Midwest ranged up 30 mph to 40 mph, causing snow drifting and poor visibility in many areas. More than a half million people were without power in Missouri and Illinois, half of them in the St. Louis area, according to Ameren Corp. following wind-whipped ice storms that downed trees and power lines. As temperatures sank below freezing, the utility warned the outages could be lengthy. The affected area runs about 270 miles (434 km) from south of St. Louis into central Illinois, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which said the Red Cross was opening shelters in the region. Missouri was plastered with as much as a foot (30.5 cm) of snow in the western and central parts of the state. Interstate 70, a major east-west continental highway, was closed across much of the central part of the state. Similar snowfall accumulations hit parts of Illinois and Wisconsin. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius declared a disaster emergency for 27 counties after ice followed by heavy snow blanketed the state. Schools and business closed. One ambulance slid into a ditch and about 400 residents of Johnson County lost power after a snowplow skidded into a utility pole. Chicago commuters knew they were in for a rough day when early morning traffic reports said a snowplow had skidded into a ditch in the suburbs. As much as 8 inches (20.3 cm) of snow fell from Wichita, Kansas, south in a band to Oklahoma. At Chicago's O'Hare International Airport hundreds of flights were canceled, causing back-ups and delays at other airports across the country. The two major carriers at O'Hare, American and United, said they expected to have operations at a near-normal level later in the day. Commonwealth Edison Company, a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. said around 14,000 of its customers were without power in Chicago and its suburbs. The storm rode in on bitter subfreezing cold, chasing balmy temperatures of the past few days out of the region.
