"With the winds, it will be nasty, with low visibility, drifting and blowing."īargfrede said road closures are possible. "It doesn't really matter if we get 3, 10 or 6 inches," Bargfrede said. More: Extreme cold: Why is my house cracking and popping in freezing weather? and state highways.īut he said the dealing with the storm will be challenging, given the snow, extreme wind and its duration. Officials continued Tuesday to encourage everyone to stay off the roads Thursday and Friday, and closely watch weather and road conditions when traveling Wednesday and over the weekend.Ĭraig Bargfrede, the Iowa Department of Transportation's winter operations manager, said the state has 920 plows and 1,375 employees ready to tackle snow across the state's 25,000 lane miles of interstate, U.S. View Gallery: Iowa weather: The blizzard of 1973 was dubbed Iowa's 'worst spring storm in at least 80 years' Transportation officials: Stay safe, stay home to keep up with demand," Potthoff said, adding that pushing deliveries up also helps keep the company's truckers off the road during the worst of the storm. Stores have been packed with customers shopping for the holiday and in preparation for the winter storm, she said. Hy-Vee, the large Iowa-based grocery chain, pushed up deliveries to its stores and beefed up staffing, asking area supervisors to stock shelves, Hy-Vee spokesperson Tina Potthoff said in an email. Iowans cleared grocery shelves in anticipation of the storm. It's going to look like a snow globe out there with snow blowing everywhere, with blizzard or near-blizzard conditions." "We're talking whiteout conditions" with visibility cut to a couple hundred feet, Curtis said. Northern and northwest Iowa's wind chill will fall to minus 45 degrees. Wind chill is expected to drive "feel-like" temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees in most parts of the state, Curtis said. More: Wind chills in Iowa could drop below minus 40. Iowa is expected to get 4 to 7 inches of snow, with eastern Iowa seeing the heaviest accumulation. Snowfall in central Iowa will begin around midday Wednesday, with winds gusting up to almost 50 mph Thursday and Friday, said Allan Curtis, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Johnston.
Just across the border in south central Minnesota, it issued a full-fledged blizzard warning. The National Weather Service on Tuesday afternoon issued a winter storm warning for most of Iowa and a wind chill warning for northwest Iowa. Iowa is bracing for one of the worst snowstorms to hit the state in a decade, with residents emptying grocery shelves, shopping for shovels and generators, and city, county and state snowplow crews prepping for a five-day, road-clearing marathon. Watch Video: What to do if your car doesn't start in the coldįor the latest on the developing winter storm, see the Des Moines Register's live weather blog.
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