Blizzards, high winds hit Ohio, Indiana

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A heavy winter storm walloped Ohio’s capital city with more than 20 inches of snow, while blizzard conditions shut down highways and stranded air travelers across the state and parts of Indiana on Saturday.

High winds whipped the snow into 3-foot-tall drifts in some places and cut visibility to less than a quarter mile, the National Weather Service said. Heavy rain and severe weather hit the East Coast.

“It’s horrible out there right now,” said 58-year-old Carman Bonfiglio, a FedEx driver who was stranded at a truck stop in Sunbury, about 20 miles northeast of Columbus. “Trucks are just spinning right here. In my days of driving I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The storm, which rolled in Friday, dumped 20.4 inches of snow on Columbus, breaking the city’s previous record of 15.3 inches set in February 1910, the weather service said. Cincinnati and Cleveland also received about a foot of snow.

State officials urged motorists to avoid the roads. At least nine counties closed roads to non-emergency traffic, meaning that anyone caught driving was subject to arrest unless they were involved in an emergency.

In Indiana, 14 inches of snow fell in Milan, about 60 miles southeast of Indianapolis, the weather service said.

It was a continuation of the storm that on Friday piled up snow a foot deep in Arkansas and blacked out thousands of homes and businesses from that state to the Great Lakes. Louisville, Ky., and parts of Tennessee got up to a foot, while northern Mississippi got 5 to 7 inches of snow, the weather service said.