Heavy Snow Hits the Midwest, and Los Angeles County Prepares for a Rare Blizzard

Aug 08, 2023

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Nearly all of the United States is experiencing some form of notable weather this week — ice, snow or unseasonably warm temperatures.

By Judson Jones and Derrick Bryson Taylor

Judson Jones is a meteorologist and reporter for The Times.

Follow the latest updates on the winter weather.

Blizzard warnings were issued for more than two million people across the United States this week, some in places you’d expect, like Minnesota, and some in places you probably would not, like the mountains around Los Angeles.

Almost all of the country is experiencing some form of notable weather this week, meteorologists said. While much of the eastern half of North America is basking in springlike weather, a major winter storm was taking hold from Southern California to Toronto.

As the winter weather strengthened its grip in the Midwest on Wednesday, it was promising a mixed bag of wintry weather — strong winds, heavy snow, frigid temperatures and freezing rain. It was likely to disrupt travel on the roads and had already heavily affected air travel. More than 1,700 flights within, into or out of the United States were canceled as of late Wednesday night, Eastern time, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website. Some schools were closed as states prepared for over a foot of snow into Wednesday night, the second round of snowfall in this storm system.

Snow in the Southern California mountains is not uncommon but when the forecast calls for a blizzard, people wonder if it is some kind of mistake. But forecasters say a blizzard isn’t unheard-of in the region. It just hasn’t happened for a while.

The National Weather Service in Los Angeles issued a winter storm warning for the mountains of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties until early Friday, warning of “extremely dangerous mountain conditions.” A rare blizzard warning, for the same areas, will take over from Friday through Saturday.

This isn’t the first blizzard warning ever issued by the Los Angeles National Weather Service office, but it has been decades since the last one. The forecast office’s historical records go back only to 2006, so its forecasters, more accustomed to issuing high surf advisories and flash flood warnings, were not sure when they last issued a blizzard warning.

However, after some sleuthing, they found one was issued on Feb. 4, 1989.

Forecasters in Los Angeles described the storm affecting that region as cold and dangerous and predicted up to seven feet of snow in areas more than 6,000 feet above sea level. Lesser amounts, between one and four inches, were expected in elevations of less than 2,500 feet. Areas along the coast and valleys could see a few inches of rain.

“This is shaping up to be a very unusual event in certain places, especially, and the impacts are probably going to be really substantial,” Dr. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at U.C.L.A., said in a video on Tuesday.

The lower elevation snow will mean that this could be the largest amount of 24-to-48 hour snowfall seen in decades — likely since a 1989 snowstorm that snarled traffic — for the Ventura and Los Angeles County mountains, forecasters said.

“Everything is adding up for a major snow event,” said Andrew Rorke, a senior forecaster for the Los Angeles National Weather Service office.

Dr. Swain said that the weather will escalate on Thursday and Friday, when colder air moves in over the state. Snow is expected across low elevations “all the way from the Oregon border to the Mexican border,” he said, forecasting that many Californians will be able to see snow on the nearby hills on Friday morning.

A person standing in downtown Los Angeles can see a 10,600-foot peak that will typically have snow on it, Mr. Rorke said. By Saturday that snow will be much lower on the nearby mountain, showing more snow than a typical winter storm.

But don’t expect the Hollywood sign to be lost in snow-covered hillside.

“The Hollywood Hills are saved from snow, but the San Gabriels behind the Hollywood sign are certainly not,” Mr. Rorke said.

Los Angeles is surrounded by mountains, and when they get heavy snow, passage through them shuts down.

Strong winds were already causing power failures across the state. More than 45,000 electricity customers in California — more than half of them in the San Francisco Bay Area — were without power on Wednesday night. The utility Pacific Gas & Electric said that winds were affecting electrical equipment. The Weather Service office in San Francisco reported that powerful winds had downed trees and damaged roofs.

Heavy snow and strong winds that developed over the Northern Rockies on Tuesday were pushing east across the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest on Wednesday, meteorologists said. Over a foot of snow is forecast from South Dakota through parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Snow totals could reach two feet in southern Minnesota, where the heaviest snow and blizzard conditions could develop late Wednesday.

“The second round that is really the main event of the storm,” said Joseph Calderone, senior forecaster at the National Weather Service in the Twin Cities.

More than 700,000 electricity customers were without power late Wednesday night in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us. More than 560,000 of those outages were in Michigan.

About 400 flights were canceled to and from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport early Wednesday, FlightAware said. At Denver International Airport, nearly 300 arriving and outgoing flights were canceled, and several hundred were delayed.

Blizzard warnings were in place for people living just west of the Twin Cities and across large portions of Minnesota and the Dakotas.

Significant ice accumulations were expected in parts of Michigan, according to the Weather Service office in Detroit. Freezing rain, sleet and snow were also predicted to fall in the region.

Some school districts in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and other states canceled classes on Wednesday, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Waukesha and Washington County campuses were closed.

Even for places used to winter weather and driving on snow, ice on the road can often cause even the most experienced driver to have problems.

More than 250 flights arriving at or departing from Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport were affected on Wednesday, most of them canceled.

The storm represented one of the biggest tests of Southwest Airlines’s network after the carrier made changes in response to a holiday meltdown that forced it to cancel thousands of flights. By midday Wednesday, Southwest had canceled about 7 percent of flights planned for the day, second to Delta Air Lines, which canceled about 10 percent of its schedule. About 23 percent of Southwest’s flights were delayed, behind Delta’s 26 percent, according to FlightAware. It was unclear exactly how many of the cancellations and delays were a direct result of the weather.

Early Wednesday, the Twin Cities and surrounding areas had already received three to five inches and could receive another eight to 12 inches of snow by midnight.

“Minnesotans are no strangers to extreme weather, but this storm could break records,” Gov. Tim Walz said on Twitter on Wednesday.

While the storm was expected to slam the Upper Midwest, it was also forecast to bring snow to a portion of the Northeast later in the week. A winter storm watch was in effect for parts of Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont.

Heavier snow totals of up to a foot were likely for higher elevations, like the Adirondacks and the Green and White Mountains, the Weather Service said. Lighter accumulations of up to four inches were predicted for the lower elevations across upstate New York and central New England.

April Rubin and Mike Ives contributed reporting.

An earlier version of this article misstated when Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said that he had directed several state agencies to prepare for winter weather. It was on Tuesday night, not Monday.

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Judson Jones is a meteorologist and reporter for The Times, covering the most extreme storms across the globe. More about Judson Jones

Derrick Bryson Taylor is a general assignment reporter. He previously worked at The New York Post’s PageSix.com and Essence magazine. More about Derrick Bryson Taylor

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