View of Downtown Des Moines during Saturday's blizzard. Photo: Andrew Houp
(Des Moines, IA) -- Frigid temperatures, strong winds, and blowing snow plagued much of Iowa on Saturday. Road conditions are slowly improving across the state, but still are in a mostly snow-covered condition in Central and Eastern Iowa. Travel was not advised on Interstate 35 from south of Clear Lake to the Missouri border, and on Interstate 80 from the area west of Des Moines to the Illinois border, according to the Iowa DOT. Very difficult travel conditions are ongoing in eastern Iowa -- blowing and drifting snow is creating a whiteout with slick conditions. Much of Iowa is under a wind chill warning until Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
"It will be very dangerous, with the combination of this blowing and drifting snow and these very dangerous wind chills," said Meteorologist Brad Small with the National Weather Service office in Johnston. "It will make travel very hazardous, if you're stuck in these wind chills, it would be very life threatening."
The Des Moines area had nearly nine inches of snow with Friday's storm.
"It's been a few years since I've seen this much snow in this amount of time," said Mike Swalve, with Structure Construction in Des Moines, who plows snow for several clients during the winter. He says travel was hazardous, but that he was still able to get around. "I did have some trouble going from Altoona to Mitchellville [Friday night]," Swalve said, but that now "they seemed to have that cleaned up pretty well."
Central Iowa had over eleven additional inches of snow still on the ground from Tuesday.
"Every ten years, here it is again," said Tom Evans, who was cleaning up snow on Saturday for the Coin Laundry on Des Moines' East Side. "The sub zero weather is what's dangerous, Evans said, "that's what's hard to do."