DENVER - A major winter storm in the western United States was moving east, as holidays travellers faced scattered flight delays Wednesday and state authorities reported at least six traffic deaths.
The storm was expected to dump more than a foot (a third of a meter) of snow on parts of Colorado and southern Utah by midday, and blow east through Christmas Day. Blizzard warnings were likely on Christmas Eve in Kansas.
"Pretty much the entire central and southern Rockies are going to get snow, and then it's going east and will drop more snow," said Stan Rose, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Pueblo, Colorado.
Winter storm warnings stretched from Colorado through the Dakotas and into Minnesota. They also were issued for areas in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported numerous crashes in the western part of the state, including a double fatality collision. A woman was killed Tuesday when her sports utility vehicle apparently hit black ice and slid across a median in western Nebraska.
Blustery weather already had snarled traffic in Arizona, with blizzard-like conditions shutting down roads and causing a pileup involving 20 vehicles Tuesday. South of Phoenix, a dust storm set off a series of collisions that killed at least three people.
A tropical jet stream pumping in moisture from the storm's south was likely to cause plenty of snow as the storm headed into the Plains states.
Travellers were warned to check with their airlines before arriving for flights. Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was reporting that flights were delayed an average of 2 1/2 hours Wednesday morning. Shorter delays were reported in New York, Baltimore, Washington and Houston.
The winter blast follow a weekend storm that dropped record snowfall and interrupted holiday shopping and travel on the East Coast.
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Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, Josh Funk and Eric Olson in Omaha, Nebraska, Mark Carlson in Phoenix and Elizabeth White in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
National Weather Service: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/
