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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Extremes batter Midwest

Two deaths blamed on massive storm system

Police officer Shannon Vandenheuvel, left, and Melissa Kolenda, right, help Barbara Jones from her partially submerged car in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Thursday. (Associated Press)
Associated Press

ST. LOUIS – A powerful spring storm system stretching from southern Texas to northern Michigan unleashed a wave of weather extremes on the Midwest on Thursday and threatened to bring its mix of hard rains, high winds and severe thunderstorms to the East by the weekend.

The massive system was wreaking havoc from the Rockies to the Rust Belt, and officials were blaming two road deaths Thursday on the storm.

Up to a foot of snow was expected in parts of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Snow and ice closed highways in Colorado and Wyoming. Rivers surged beyond their banks from downpours in Missouri, Iowa and Illinois. Tornadoes caused scattered damage in Oklahoma. Hail caused a wreck that injured a high school teacher and her students. Lightning temporarily knocked out a nuclear power plant. Rain caused a sinkhole that devoured three cars in Chicago.

In the Plains and Midwest, seemingly every community was under some sort of watch or warning.

Alex Sosnowski, a meteorologist for AccuWeather, said the storm’s biggest punch had come from its intense rainfall: “There’s been a general 3 to 6 inch swath of rain from portions of Oklahoma all the way up to southern Wisconsin.”

The system will thin out as it heads east but could still spell trouble in the Appalachian Mountain region today and in some spots along the East Coast by tonight, Sosnowski said.

Midwesterners will be glad to see it go.

Minnesota State Police say 16-year-old Jonathon Pohlen of Houlton, Wis., was killed Thursday afternoon when he lost control on snowy Interstate 94 in eastern Minnesota, crossed over the median and collided with a truck’s trailer.

Meanwhile, flash floods are being blamed for the death of an 80-year-old motorist south of St. Louis. Police in De Soto, Mo., said the woman’s car was swept Thursday off Highway E into Joachim Creek. The woman was not immediately identified.

In Clarksville, Mo., a small, scenic Mississippi River town about 60 miles north of St. Louis, some 100 people were working feverishly to build a makeshift levee of gravel, plastic overlap and sandbags in a bid to keep downtown dry. The heavy rain caused a sudden surge in the river, with a crest expected by early Sunday.

“I’m confident it will work, but I’m not confident we’re going to get it done in time,” Clarksville resident Richard Cottrell, 64, said of the sandbag levee. “It’s a race against the clock.”