Winter storm closes roads in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska

A powerful late winter snowstorm intensified over the central Rocky Mountains on Sunday with heavy snow and wind leading to airport and road closures, power outages and avalanche warnings in parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska.

The National Weather Service in Wyoming called it a “historic and crippling” winter storm that would cause extremely dangerous to impossible travel conditions through at least early Monday.

Major roads southeast of a line that crosses diagonally from the southwest corner of Wyoming to its northeast corner were closed Sunday, including roads in and out of Cheyenne and Casper.

Over 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow had fallen just outside Cheyenne by 9:30 a.m. Saturday, the weather service reported, while other areas around the city had seen 16 to 19 inches (41 to 48 centimeters). A SNOTEL site at Windy Peak in the Laramie Range reported 52 inches (1.3 meters) of snow in a 24-hour period ending Sunday morning, the weather service said.

A person who answered the phone at the Love's Travel Stop in Cheyenne, but declined to give his name, said 98 trucks were stranded there. They were taking fuel out a can at a time to fill up generators on the trucks to keep their refrigerators or freezers running, he said.

Interstate 80 was closed across southern Wyoming and into the Nebraska panhandle, where a foot (30 centimeters) of snow was reported just north of Kimball, Nebraska. Interstate 25 was closed north from Fort Collins, Colorado, to its end at Buffalo, Wyoming.

At Denver International Airport, the runways were closed just before noon Sunday due to blowing snow and poor visibilities. “Many flights have already been canceled so the runway closures have minimal impacts,” airport officials said in social media posts. A foot of snow fell at DIA on Saturday and another foot was expected...