Spring snow blankets Ohio Valley

INDIANAPOLIS – The spring snow storm that buried parts of Nebraska under more than 2 feet of snow swept through the Ohio Valley on Tuesday, shutting down schools and making travel tough for voters headed for the polls for the Illinois primary election.

As much as 2 inches of snow an hour fell in some areas of Illinois and Indiana, and wind gusted to 40 mph, weather officials said.

“Our weather’s terrible. The highways are terrible. It’s not the highway department’s fault, they just can’t keep up with it,” said Morgan County, Ill., sheriff’s Deputy Trevor Lahey. He answered more than 50 calls Tuesday morning about cars in ditches west of Springfield.

In Colorado, Interstate 70 reopened early Tuesday after its eastbound lanes between Denver and the Kansas line were shut down for nearly 18 hours because of heavy snow. Interstate 80 also reopened Tuesday across Nebraska.

The storm dumped as much as 28 inches of snow on central Nebraska on Monday, 20 inches in parts of South Dakota and half a foot in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Wind piled the snow into drifts 7 feet high in parts of South Dakota and Nebraska. Farther south, heavy rain caused flooding in the Dallas area.

By midmorning Tuesday, more than 7 inches of snow had fallen on parts of western Indiana, and wind up to 25 mph created whiteout conditions in some areas, the National Weather Service said. Snowfall in parts of Illinois topped 10 inches.

Indiana State Police reported dozens of accidents. School districts across central Illinois and western and central Indiana closed for the day.

The storm hit after an unseasonably warm winter in which snowfall was 30 percent to 50 percent below normal in Indiana.

Indiana state climatologist Dev Niyogi said the erratic weather will likely continue, in part because of the impact of La Niña, the mild cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean that often coincides with stronger and more frequent hurricanes, a wetter Pacific Northwest and a drier South.