Crashes and flight delays were accumulating on Sunday night as a major winter storm swept through Minnesota and Wisconsin, bringing dangerous travel conditions at the end of the holiday weekend.
The National Weather Service warned that the system would bring heavy snow and blizzard conditions from the upper Midwest to the Great Lakes through Monday. A blizzard warning was in effect late Sunday for parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas.
As wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour whipped across southern Minnesota on Sunday night, roads in the western part of the state were blanketed with snow and visibility was reduced to a half-mile or less, according to the Weather Service. Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said he had authorized the National Guard to support emergency winter storm operations.
Reports of crashes and spinouts in the state were piling up. The Minnesota State Patrol reported at least three crashes resulting in injuries and nearly 121 vehicles off the road through Sunday evening.
Earlier on Sunday, bad weather at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport led to a ground stop that was later lifted. The airport had at least 400 delayed flights and more than 170 canceled flights as of Sunday evening, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware.
And in Michigan, where more than a foot of snow was expected along the state’s Upper Peninsula on Sunday night, more than 50,000 customers had no power as of about 11 p.m. local time, according to the site PowerOutage.com.
The bad weather pummeled the Midwest as people across the United States returned home after the long holiday weekend. Nearly three million people had been expected to travel on Sunday, according to the Transportation Security Administration. But as of Sunday evening, there were more than 28,000 delayed flights and more than 1,400 canceled flights nationwide, according to FlightAware.
Forecasts called for heavy snow from Lake Erie and Lake Ontario to last into Tuesday, with wind gusts greater than 40 m.p.h., subzero wind chill temperatures in parts of the Midwest.
Separately, forecasters warned that freezing rain would likely develop in the Northeast on Sunday evening. A mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain will most likely affect northern New England before warmer air changes the wintry mix to rain later on Monday, the Weather Service said.
Jin Yu Young contributed reporting.
Johnny Diaz is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news from Miami.
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