This week’s troublesome winter weather is putting more pressure on the U.S. Postal Service, which is already swamped with holiday mailings. Some Iowa post offices are still without power. U.S.P.S. spokesman Kerry Kowalski says if you haven’t yet got your cards, letters and packages in the mail, get cracking.
Kowalski says Priority Mail can be mailed up to December 20th and Express Mail can be sent up to the 22nd and still be guaranteed to arrive by Christmas Day. December 18th is the deadline for packages going Express Mail. He says the sooner Iowans can get those items in the mail, the better.
Kowalski says: "Obviously, as soon as you possibly can is good. Mother Nature is certainly throwing some challenges in for us and we want to make sure people get their packages on the way as soon as they can. Certainly, we have a lot of options available to people that are busy that haven’t got their shopping done and whatnot." If you’d hoped to send something to a soldier in Iraq, Afghanistan or somewhere else overseas, he says those deadlines are already past.
A Postal Service spokesman says 55 Post Offices in Iowa lost power at the peak of the storm Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning five were still without power.