A snow storm
that blanketed much of Wyoming, shutting down highways and stranding
travelers through the weekend, turned its fury on Colorado and
Nebraska on Sunday and set a record for early snowfall in Cheyenne.
The capital
city had recorded 10.5 inches of snow by Sunday morning, but warming
temperatures through the afternoon were quickly melting the accumulation.
By evening,
only a couple of inches remained on the ground in Cheyenne as
the brunt of the storm plowed through the mountains of Colorado
and headed into the Plains, pulling down tree branches and causing
power outages. A week earlier, Denver had set a temperature record
with its 61st day at 90 degrees or above.
The last comparable
September snowfall for Cheyenne hit Sept. 28, 1985, when a storm
left 4.9 inches of snow across the city. On Sept. 18, 1942, 4
inches fell, according to the National Weather Service.
More than
1,200 travelers who had been stranded overnight in Rawlins and
Rock Springs--some for two days--began moving out on Sunday as
Interstate 80 was reopened across the state one section at a time.
Stranded trucks
parked along both sides of the highway, and the mass exodus of
previously stranded drivers caused traffic bottlenecks outside
each city, the Wyoming Highway Patrol said.
``We had 15
miles in Rawlins that was nothing but a parking lot for trucks,''
said Don Brinkman, chairman of the Red Cross branch in Carbon
County.
More than
500 travelers spent Saturday night at a Red Cross shelter set
up at the Rawlins Family Recreation Center, and about 400 others
stayed at the Wyoming National Guard armory in town.
``Most of
these are from California trying to go to Illinois, New York,
down to Colorado Springs, just all over the place,'' Brinkman
said.
Other traveler
ended up in churches and a former train depot after the hotels
filled up. Four hundred holed up in Rock Springs at an events
complex and a recreation center.
``This town,
the whole area, is just bumper to pumper trucks, cars moving vans
you name it,'' said Judy Valentine, Sweetwater County emergency
management coordinator, who was in Rock Springs.
Saturday evening,
a 12-car pileup on Interstate 80 just east of Laramie delayed
a University of Nevada bus and postponed for an hour a football
game at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. There were no major
injuries.
Tom and Linda
Vaught, of Wichita, Kan., had planned to spend a week camping
in Yellowstone National Park. Instead they felt lucky just having
a hotel room in Laramie.
``We've never
been stuck like this, ever,'' Tom Vaught said. ``We'll always
remember Laramie.''
Vaught said
he went to the local Wal-Mart looking for gloves and found none.
``I asked the lady where all the gloves were and she said the
Nevada football team came in and cleaned us out,'' he said.
On Sunday,
the storm dumped up to 15 inches of snow in Colorado's northern
mountains and about 6 inches along the lower elevations of the
Front Range. Power outages were reported across Larimer County,
about 62 miles north of Denver, as the snow collected on leafy
trees and snapped branches, said Carl Burroughs of the National
Weather Service.
Farther east,
the storm covered the western half of Nebraska. Nearly 9 inches
fell at Harrisburg, near the Wyoming state line, and about 6 1/2
inches fell at Scottsbluff.
Freezing temperatures
were expected there into early Monday, with sunshine and warmer
readings forecast by afternoon.
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