grand island. on interstate 70 west of denver, a snowy mountain crash claiming at least one life. not far away, a rockslide closed part of the major highway for hours. on colorado s eastern plains, whiteout blizzard conditions brought another i-70 shutdown. woke up and thought i d take a chance. but no dice. it s just too dicey. thank god they closed the roads. reporter: nearly a foot of snow dumped into the denver area. motorists fighting losing battles against spinning tires, some giving up, driving the wrong way to escape. firefighters race to keep up with countless crashes. luckily, no one hurt in this collision. and in colorado springs apparently, there s just snow all over the place. nobody s going anywhere. reporter: back at the denver airport, an urgent effort to clear runways. nearly 550 cancelled flights since monday, and an overnight stay for more than 1,100 stranded travelers. abc s alex perez is ahead of the storm in minneapolis. with this storm on the move,
won t crack the freezing mark, probably not. and the windchill is in the upper teens. it s a whole different story in chicago. but the nice thing, it s dry, craig, which makes a difference for the folks trying to get back to work but you mentioned the a dakotas got pummelled. they had to close almost 250 miles of interstate highways. not just the snow but the wind gust, 50 to 60 miles per hour. whiteout blizzard conditions, dangerous on the roads there. so they re cleaning up from that and in the meantime, in minnesota, all those folks up there who love to fish because they got basically a lake everywhere you turn, about ten of these folks out in the ice house and the lake wasn t quite ready for them. i m not saying anything about their weight, but wasn t quite ready, so the ice house was going down. but they have to wait longer before they get out there to catch some sturgeon. and you saw in wisconsin, so
stay inside and you know, stay safe, don t be out on the roadways unless it s necessary. reporter: sparks flying off power lines and crews are on the ready to respond to out annuals when t out annuages own the storm pass. winds whipping at gusts up to 35 miles per hour. right now i m holding up our wind meter looking at gusts of wind up to 20 miles per hour, it s only expected to get worse, that s why you see the streets are empty, everybody is at home weathering the storm. as you can see, conditions have worsened. i ve got this wind meter right here, you can see the gusts of wind blowing right now we re looking at about 20 miles per hour, it s been higher and conditions continue to worsen. and fredricka, from when i was stn aing interest, things are a bit better, there wasn t as much coastal flooding as they thought there was going to be. i ve lrnd a lot frearned a lot s
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well as further west the chicago fire department teamed up to save a man stuck in the icy waters of lake michigan. it is not clear why he s out on the freezing lake or how he ended up chest deep in water, but within 35 minutes of a 911 call, first responders pulled the unresponsive man to safety and had him in the hands of emergency medical services. he s been taken to the university of chicago hospital and listed in critical condition. still to come, an nfl record could be set on the frozen tundra not for how the packers play but for the conditions that they might be playing in. [ telephone rings ] [ shirley ] edward jones. [ male announcer ] with nearly 7 million investors. oh hey, neill, how are you? [ male announcer ] .you d expect us to have a highly skilled call center. kevin, neill holley s on line one. ok, great. [ male announcer ] and we do. it s how edward jones makes sense of investing.