Blizzard strikes Kirksville

In a good way, "snowpocalypse" or "snowmageddon", as some are calling it, did not live up to its movie counterpart.

The biggest winter storm in recent memory resulted in zero reported fatalities or injuries in Adair County as of Wednesday morning, Kirksville Police Chief Jim Hughes said.

"I'm not aware in this point in time of there being any injuries related to the snow," Hughes said.

The offices of the Department of Public Safety were closed Wednesday and therefore were not directly available for comment. A call placed to DPS on Wednesday afternoon went to a Kirksville dispatcher, who said there have been zero reports of campus fatalities, injuries and damage to buildings.

Hughes said he received one report of a power outage, in the Northwest part of the county. He said the outage occurred early Wednesday morning and affected approximately 100 people for 1.5 hours before Tri-County Electric fixed it.

The weather resulted in two straight snow days for the University, the first since 1973. All campus buildings, except for the residence halls, closed at 5 p.m. Tuesday.  The Student Union Building and Pickler Memorial Library remained closed Wednesday while the Student Recreation Center opened for limited hours.

Truman's emergency text message system was used for the first time since an incident in Dobson Hall during fall 2009.

The storm produced 14 inches of snow and 0.1 to 0.2 inches of ice in Kirksville, according to the National Weather Service, which could not confirm whether the storm set any records in the area.

"Our immediate focus is ensuring that there's still nobody out there unaccounted for trying to get the streets taken care of, get the vehicles that are actually

blocking traffic out of the way," Hughes said Wednesday. "The city and county are littered basically with abandoned vehicles, some of which are in traffic, some of which are not."

The storm changed to a blizzard, which requires 35 mph winds and visibility near zero, early Tuesday night. The last time Kirksville had blizzard-like conditions was in December of 2009, according to the National Weather Service, but that storm did not produce as much snowfall.

Highway I-70 closed from St. Louis to Kansas City on Tuesday until Wednesday morning due to whiteout conditions. Highway 63 also was closed Tuesday.

The nation wide storm affected roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population. Areas in Central Missouri had record snow accumulation and as much as 6 inches fell as far south as Texas, according to the National Weather Service.