Blizzard conditions have shut down roadways and travel is not recommended in many areas of western and northwestern Iowa this afternoon.
DOT Winter Operations Director Craig Bargfrede says a large area is impacted. “If you draw a line basically from just north of Council Bluffs, kind of in the Missouri Valley area, and then do a diagonal up through Carroll, Fort Dodge, Mason City, pretty much that area, along that line and just north of that line. Interstate 29 is closed in both directions between Sergeant Bluff and Missouri Valley. Bargfrede says they are working on getting some of the vehicles there removed as there are power lines down on the interstate. He says electric crews can’t get in to work on the power lines until they get cars out of the way.
Bargfrede says there are a lot of semis and other cars that have blocked roads as the storm blew through. We didn’t close the roads, the roads closed themselves due to incidents and vehicles and trucks basically getting stuck and stranded in those areas,” he says. Bargfrede says they have not pulled any crews off the roadways.
“We’re continuing to plow and trying to get in there as best we can and at least free those vehicles,” Bargfrede says. “There are some towing bans in place up in that same area. So, what that means if the vehicle is down in the right of way, not in the traveled portion of the highway, it’s probably going to remain there until conditions have improved.”
He says the snow missed much of the rest of the state as it curled up north. “Get into the Des Moines and on into like, say, Iowa City, Coralville, Cedar Rapids area, into the Quad Cities. Conditions are are much better, still seeing wind, still seeing some off and on showers in that area, but not the snow. It’s pretty dramatic drop off from where we’re seeing the significant snow till there’s basically nothing other than wet payment,” Bargfrede says. Bargfrede says crews will keep working as long as needed to clear the roadways.
.At one point in the afternoon MidAmerican energy spokesman Geoff Greenwood says more than 23,000 MidAmerican customers were without power due to the storm. “We’re really getting hit hard by Mother Nature this time around,”he says. It is the second blizzard they’ve had to deal with this month, and he says the snow isn’t the biggest problem. “Really, the biggest system impact that we’re seeing is due to extremely high sustained winds and wind gusts. Those winds are just pummeling our overhead lines there,” he says. “they’re taking down trees. Tree debris is taking down overhead lines, and then with all the snow that we’re getting, it’s hard, if not impossible, for our crews to get to where they need to go in some instances.”
Greenwood says the most damage so far has been in northwest Iowa. “They’re seeing is they’re seeing a very large number of lines down, trees on lines. We’re seeing poles down, and I mean a fairly large number throughout the northwestern part of our service area. So this is a sizable impact that we’re experiencing,” Greenwood says. He says the number of people without power has been constantly changing as the storm moves through and they react to the damage.”In some cases we are able to reroute the circuit to restore customers, but in other cases, it is going to be taking a broken pole out, replacing that pole, and then all the equipment up on top, and that’s going to take some time,” he says.
There has been less snow as the storm moved to the east, but Greenwood says ice has been an issue in other areas. “When ice builds up on an overhead line, it changes the air flow on that line, the line starts to bounce. And once it bounces violently, it can snap, it can break components, and it can take down poles. And we’ve seen some situations where it’s a cascading effect, and it’s pole after pole after pole that’s been taken down.
Greenwood says they had enough warning for this storm to get crews in place. “We were concerned enough to send extra crews into western and northwestern Iowa to stage them. In other words, we put them in a location, and they waited for the storm to come to them, and that’s because we were concerned about the ability for them to travel,” Greenwod says. Greenwood says those concerns about travel proved to come true as the closed roads have caused problems with crews getting in to fix downed poles and power lines.