Northwest Iowa — Winter came calling Wednesday, with a vengeance, bring blizzard conditions to northwest Iowa.
The storm began with freezing rain, then changed over to heavy, wet snow which was blown around by gale-force winds. White-out conditions were common across the area, with most county sheriff’s officers pulling their deputies from the roads unless the situation was an emergency. Area law enforcement were advising no travel by mid-afternoon Wednesday, as numerous cars became stuck in the snow, forcing the closure of portions of Highway 18, Highway 10 and other area roads as tow trucks were also pulled from the roads except in emergencies.
Brad Adams is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls and he tells us that the amount of snow you got was dependent upon where you were located.
(As above) “Most of northwest Iowa had from two to four inches. The highest report we saw was around five inches at Sheldon. Four inches (fell) in the Okoboji area and there were some heavier amounts a little further east.”
He says the snowfall combined with extremely strong winds to wreak havoc on the area.
(As above) “The winds certainly were fairly potent, obviously. We had a developing, strengthening area of low pressure moving up through eastern Nebraska and had some sixty-plus, a few areas of seventy-plus mile-per-hour winds.”
Several Sheldon customers of MidAmerican energy were without power at the height of the blizzard. According to a spokesperson for MidAmerican, 804 Sheldon customers lost their electric power at 7:09 Wednesday evening. Crews were immediately dispatched and had power restored in about an hour.
The area was completely shut down, with most businesses closing early and numerous churches cancelling their Wednesday evening activities.
The silver lining to this dark cloud, however, is that northwest Iowa is now guaranteed to have a white Christmas.
