Rain and rapidly rising temperatures accompanied by thick fog threatened to cause flooding on Saturday in the Midwestern US after days of Arctic cold, heavy snow and ice.
Thick ice on roads that contributed to dozens of deaths had thawed and mountains of snow turned into pools and streams of water.
“It’s a Catch 22,” said Marisa Kollias, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Transportation. “We’re getting rid of one problem, the ice, but we’re getting another problem with the flooding.”
The National Weather Service posted flood watches and warnings on Saturday for parts of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Missouri. As much as 5cm of rain fell in two hours during the night in west-central Illinois, the National Weather Service reported on Saturday.
And as warm air collided with cold, the weather service posted tornado watches for parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and Kansas.
A powerful storm swept across a wide swath of south and central Illinois during the afternoon, packing wind gusts of 96kph to 112kph, National Weather Service meteorologist Patrick Bak said. Storms also produced hail and the weather service office in St. Louis received reports of funnel clouds.
In the Chicago area, repairs to some power lines were being slowed by flooding at ComEd substations, said spokesman Jeff Burdick.
Winds knocked out power to 63,600 ComEd customers on Saturday. Of those, 55,000 had power restored by Saturday evening.
High winds left 42,000 people in western Missouri without electricity; power had been restored to most by Saturday evening.
The weather service said the Chariton River was overflowing and causing minor flooding in Chariton, Iowa. Flood stage is 4m; the river was at 5.05m at 3am on Saturday and expected to rise a bit more. It said road flooding was reported in parts of Missouri.
By late Saturday, the rain had stopped and an ice storm swept across much of Iowa. Interstate 80 near Grinnell was closed for a while because of traffic accidents.
Around Chicago, Cook County authorities offered sandbags to communities that needed to fortify low-lying areas, county spokesman Sean Howard said.
Hundreds of people spent the night at Chicago’s Midway Airport, where all 82 flights on Friday evening were canceled as the thick fog rolled in. There were also more than 400 flight cancellations at O’Hare International Airport, the country’s second busiest.
Operations returned to near normal Saturday at Midway, although 36 flights were canceled because aircraft were out of position following Friday’s weather problems. More than 100 flights were called off on Saturday at O’Hare.
Temperatures also were rising in the Pacific Northwest, which has been pummeled by deep snow.
In Portland about 5cm of rain through on Saturday was expected to wash away much of the 48cm of snow that by one measurement had made this month the city’s snowiest month since January 1950.
Slippery roads and cold have been blamed for at least 44 deaths last week: 11 in Indiana; eight in Wisconsin; five each in Ohio and Michigan; four each in Kentucky and Missouri; two in Kansas; and one apiece in Illinois, Oklahoma, Iowa, Massachusetts and West Virginia.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS