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Snow Snarls Traffic, More Snow Expected

Frank Morris
/
KCUR

It was a bad day to try to get around in Kansas City. KCI essentially closed at mid-morning with about 300 flights cancelled. Although flights are expected to resume later tonight, more cancellations are all but certain tomorrow morning. Driving was terrible, too.

In midtown Kansas City, Mo., stalled vehicles stopped snow plows from doing their work.

"Too much snow, too much," said KCATA driver Eric Richeson, sitting at the wheel of a bus stranded at Volker and Troost as more cars and buses piled up. "One, two, three, four now," he counted. 

Richeson said he'd never seen a snowstorm this in his 30 years of driving.

There's a chance of more snow tonight, but we're not likely in for an all-time record. Totals from the first, and biggest, wave of snows came to National Weather Service in early afternoon.

George Amos, an after storm analysis manager with the National Weather Service, said official readings at KCI were 7.6 inches piled up by 1:00 pm. Ten inches of snow fell in Blue Springs, Liberty, Lee's Summit, Mo. and Shawnee, Kan.

"Here at the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill, Mo., we had 9 1/2 inches through the noon hour," said Amos.

The record to beat, in snow coming this evening, is a full foot of snow in Olathe, Kan.

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.
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