Freezing rain, snow cover parts of Upper Midwest
Jan 23, 2012, 2:19 AM
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Freezing drizzle and rain made roads slick Sunday as a winter weather system moved across portions of the Upper Midwest, and the precipitation was expected to begin changing over into snow that could continue into Monday.
The National Weather Service issued winter weather advisories for most of Minnesota and South Dakota, nearly all of Wisconsin and parts of North Dakota and Iowa for late Sunday.
The precipitation was coming from a low pressure system expected to track east across Nebraska and Iowa and deepen as it moved northeast across Wisconsin, it said.
Snow was expected Sunday in Nebraska and the Dakotas with a few inches falling in parts before midnight, the weather service said.
In other states, rain was changing to snow and was expected to continue into Monday morning. Up to 2 inches of snow were possible by Monday in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota and parts of central Wisconsin, the weather service said.
In southeastern Minnesota, Rochester police responded to more than 70 crashes on slick roadways Sunday morning, Lt. Mike Sadauskis said.
“People probably need to take their time a little bit better, give themselves a little bit more space,” he said.
In northwestern Minnesota, four people were injured in a two-car crash on an icy Interstate 94 just east of Moorhead on Sunday morning, the State Patrol reported, while a woman was injured when the car she was riding in lost control near a crash scene and slid into the rear of a parked fire truck on I-94 near Rothsay.
A teenager escaped injury when his SUV slid on an icy road and hit a snowplow Sunday morning on U.S. Highway 2 east of Wilton in Beltrami County. The snowplow driver was also unhurt.
Authorities closed Interstate 43 in both directions south of Green Bay, Wis. for over two hours after light rain turned to ice and made travel dangerous, leading to multiple crashes, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation said.
Glazing was reported Sunday across portions of northeastern Iowa and southwestern and central Wisconsin, the weather service said. In the Milwaukee area, freezing fog could reduce visibility to less than a quarter of a mile, it said.
North Dakota got freezing rain and snow Saturday into Sunday that left roads in the southern half of the state coated with ice.
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