Fast-moving storm brings snow to Midwest

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reports from De Soto, Iowa, as blizzard conditions impact the area on March 4.

Transcript

00:00Tony Lombak joins us live from DeSoto, Iowa, and yeah, I'd say that's a blizzard.

00:05Good morning, Tony. Just a, well, the winds whipped snow hitting you out your back here this morning.

00:14Yeah, well, we knew yesterday, we told you this morning, you know, yesterday morning that we were

00:19going to wake up to a whole different sight here across Iowa, and you're seeing it right here.

00:24We're in the heart of the blizzard. You kind of see behind me just all the blowing snow here,

00:28these northwest winds blowing at about 40 miles per hour. We're seeing gusts over 50, sometimes

00:33approaching 60 miles per hour, knocking down visibility to less than a quarter of a mile in

00:38many, many places. Obviously, when you're in a blizzard warning, there's certain criteria that

00:42have to be met, and snowfall is not one of those. Blowing snow, reduced visibility, and winds that

00:50are blowing, those are going to be the key ingredients for a blizzard, but we still have

00:53got the snow falling, generally a little bit lighter than we saw over the last couple hours.

00:57We're kind of on the backside of the falling snow, accumulating snow, if you will.

01:02Hard to get any measurements, really, just because there's so much blowing and drifting,

01:05but I would safely say we've probably seen anywhere between two and four inches,

01:09just depending on where you go. I know that doesn't sound like much, but trust me, it just does not

01:13take a whole lot to make a mess of things here. We are in DeSoto here. This is about 20 miles west

01:20of downtown Des Moines on I-80, really about as far as we've been able to go. We'll show you why

01:26here. This video freshens about 30 minutes ago as I-80 westbound, just up the road a few miles

01:32near Earlham, is completely blocked off right now. There are numerous semis that have been blown off

01:38of the road, many of them sideways on the interstate. We've got wreckers and cops out

01:43there right now trying to clear the interstate. The traffic backup was about three miles long.

01:48There are two exits kind of in the Earlham area that are about three, four miles apart,

01:53and the traffic basically covers that entire distance there as westbounders are all sitting

01:58there waiting for things to get cleared up that way. Several semi trucks again. The roads are very,

02:04very icy. That's one thing. It's like you can move on the highway, but you can't really like stop,

02:11and with the winds blowing some of these trucks, especially if they got lighter loads,

02:15it's just basically pushing them along till they get off to the side, and then they just get stuck.

02:19That's what's happened there on I-80 westbound. So if you're trying to get out of Des Moines for

02:23whatever reason heading over to Omaha, you're not going to get very far. You're going to end up

02:27basically here in DeSoto with the rest of us, and there's possibly even other issues further west

02:32you go, but again, not very easy to get on that. You can kind of hear the wind just blowing around

02:38me right now. Just kind of crazy conditions here. We're expecting the snowfall probably to last

02:42another couple of hours, and then it's just going to be kind of ground blizzard conditions. We do

02:47know conditions out across Nebraska have lightened up a little bit. They've switched the blizzard

02:52warnings over to winter weather advisories out that way, so that is some good news. At least it

02:57seems like the further west you do get, especially into Nebraska, things get a little easier. Right

03:02now central Iowa, western Iowa, even portions of eastern Iowa, especially get a little further

03:07north guys, definitely hazardous to near impossible travel right now. So certainly hang tight. This is

03:13going to be something hopefully we can get cleared here by later this afternoon or evening, but right

03:17now if you're trying to get very far anywhere, it's going to be very, very dangerous. Definitely

03:21recommend you hang tight wherever you're at and wait for this thing to clear out.