Snow, Cold Hits West

The western U.S. struggled against the tail end of storms New Year's Eve that left more westerly states recovering from a wintertime onslaught of snow, rain and bitter wind.

Denver, CO faced its heaviest snows of the season early Friday, while parts of Wyoming and New Mexico bundled up against stormy weather and frigid temperatures.

Phoenix braced for a subfreezing Friday morning, a rarity in the desert city.

Gaining strength, the storms Thursday blasted some states with fierce wind gusts and heavy rains or snows, closing hundreds of miles of roads and dumping a snowy mix of precipitation on the edges of Phoenix.

Officials closed a road into Yosemite National Park in California after a rock the size of a dump truck tumbled onto the road, and strong winds created snow dunes on rooftops, front yards and streets across mountainous areas of Arizona.

Snow and ice forced an hours-long closure of the two major thoroughfares in northern Arizona, stranding motorists south of Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. People in Phoenix saw a rarity, snow flurries.

Major highways were also shut down in parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Nevada.

Forecasters were predicting more of the same in eastern parts of Wyoming and New Mexico. And snow could fall at a rate close to an inch an hour in Denver, which usually has around 25 inches of snow by the New Year but had just 1.5 inches.

The Denver and Colorado Springs areas could get up to a foot of snow as the storm lingers through Friday, and the eastern plains could see up to 7 inches.  This could cause some delays at Colorado airports.