Snow and Wind Batter Parts of US, With Threat of Thunderstorms, Tornadoes

A broad and erratic patchwork of severe weather rumbled across much of the U.S. on Sunday, dumping heavy snow and making roads impassable in the Upper Midwest while damaging high winds swept across the Plains. Hawaii also continues to be affected by severe flooding.

And portions of the mid-South readied for late-day thunderstorms. Forecasters said the storms will spread eastward and by Monday threaten a large swath of the Eastern U.S., with mid-Atlantic states — including Washington, D.C. — at greatest risk for high winds and tornadoes.

Successive punches of snow, wind and severe weather are “going to impact the eastern half of the United States," AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tyler Roys said in an interview.

Beyond the threat to lives and property, “whether it’s wind gusts from a squall line, blizzard or snow, or just wind because of the storm, you’re looking at several major airports being impacted.”

Over 20 inches of snow had fallen in some portions of southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin as of Sunday afternoon, according to National Weather Service reports, with more snow likely to fall in places like Minneapolis amid blizzard warnings by the weather service.

Warnings of hazardous road conditions were issued across Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, where transportation officials warned of worsening conditions Sunday with low visibility and snow-covered roadways.

More than 600 flights flying out of and into the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport were canceled Sunday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions. Dozens more through Detroit were also scrapped.

An area from central Wisconsin to Michigan's Upper Peninsula was likely to see over 2 feet (60 centimeters) of snow, with higher isolated totals on the peninsula, Roys said. Lower snow accumulations in places like Chicago and Milwaukee will still likely create trouble for commuters on Monday, he added.

Wisconsin snowplow driver Aaron Haas said it was one of the worst storms he had seen in years. On Sunday around the town of Marshfield, Haas was stacking piles of snow as high as his truck.

“You can’t see anything when you’re on the highways outside of the city,” he said.

Jim Allen, 45, who lives on the Upper Peninsula, said his family stocked up on necessities and he was ready to clear snow several times Sunday with the shovel and snowblower.

"We’re basically prepared to just kind of hunker down for a few days if we need to,” Allen said.

Rain continued falling on Sunday in Hawaii, where acres of farmland and homes have been flooded, roads have been closed and shelters opened. PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide, reported over 50,000 electric customers in Hawaii without power as of early Sunday.

Flash flooding has been a major problem in recent days in places like Maui, Molokai and the Big Island, where rain had been falling from 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) an hour overnight, according to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said in a social media post late Saturday that some areas of Maui had received more than 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain in the previous 24 hours.

“We’re seeing flooding, landslides, sinkholes, debris and downed power lines across the county,” he said. Expressing gratitude in the Hawaiian language, the mayor added "mahalo for continuing to look out for one another.”

Footage incorporated into the mayor's video showed washed out or collapsed roads, a car stuck by floodwaters and raging waterways. National Guard and fire department workers have made multiple floodwater rescues, Bissen said.

Tom and Carrie Bashaw said they could do little to prevent part of their home in Maui's Iao Valley from collapsing beneath rising waters. On Friday, the water's force starting overtaking nearby trees.

“When we lost the mango and monkey pod, we started throwing stuff in bags and packing up,” Tom Bashaw told HawaiiNewsNow. They returned Saturday morning and “the whole backside of the house” was gone, he said.

Maui resident and real estate broker Jesse Wald, who recorded video of a coastal road's collapse Saturday, said other parts of road were flooded out by mud and sediment.

“In the 20 years I’ve been here I’ve never seen this much rain," Wald said. “I’m from Wisconsin and we get thunderstorms, you know pretty often in the summer, so it felt like a Wisconsin thunderstorm but times 10."

More than 210,000 utility customers in six Great Lakes states were without electricity as of Sunday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us. Some originated on Friday when gusts in the region reached 85 mph (137 km).

In Nebraska, about 30 National Guard members were deployed to help combat multiple wildfires across a broad swath of range and grassland, the state's Emergency Management Agency said.

As of Saturday, three of the largest wildfires had damaged well over 900 square miles, the agency said. One fire-related fatality was reported on Friday, and in a news release Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen urged residents to follow locally-issued evacuation orders, adding that winds were "supposed to be extraordinary” on Sunday.

The weather service issued a high-wind warning Sunday for most of Nebraska, with wind gusts of up to 60 mph possible amid falling snow. Roys said high winds would affect a region stretching from the U.S.-Mexico border to the Great Lakes, and from Denver eastward to the Appalachian Mountains.

The National Weather Service warned that a line of severe storms with damaging winds would cross much of the Eastern U.S. by late Monday. It was to begin Sunday afternoon and cross the Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio valleys.

The storm threat was expected to enter the Appalachians early Monday, then move toward the East Coast, where “severe thunderstorms with widespread damaging winds and several tornadoes” were expected during the day Monday, the weather service said.

A stretch from parts of South Carolina to Maryland appeared most likely to experience the greatest damaging winds Monday afternoon, the weather service said. That could include Raleigh, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia and the nation's capital.

The weather service said an increased — albeit much lower — risk stretched north to New York and south to Florida, with thunderstorms possible in New England.