Snow buries Rockies, upper Midwest

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — People in the Upper Midwest and Rockies woke up to frigid temperatures today, with heavy snow blanketing some areas.

Other parts of the country are expecting a dose of the icy weather later this week from a powerful storm that hit Alaska with hurricane-force winds over the weekend.

More than 2 feet of snow blanked parts of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and more was on the way before the front was expected to leave Wednesday. Northern Wisconsin also got as much as 18 inches of snow, and parts of central Minnesota more than 16.

The weather wasn't enough to persuade Joe Meath to flee Minnesota, even though he won nearly $12 million in a state lottery game two months ago. Meath was busy with his small snowplow business, taking care of his customers in his Chevrolet truck with nearly 300,000 miles on it.

"I don't know what I'd be doing if I wasn't doing this today," Meath told KMSP-TV.

At Northern Michigan University, journalism student Mikenzie Frost said she was headed out the door to figure skating practice early today when she learned her school, like many others in the region, was closed.