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SALT LAKE CITY -- Wednesday morning's blue skies and mild temperatures were literally the calm before a storm that was anticipated to deliver as much as 2 feet of snow in the mountains.
The weather caused problems for drivers Wednesday night. Several closures and traffic jams were reported throughout Northern Utah.
One of the toughest was Interstate 15 at the Point of the Mountain, where a tractor trailer jackknifed and stopped.
Meanwhile, the Utah Highway Patrol closed eastbound Interstate 80 in Parley's Canyon.
Interstate 84 was also closed for a time from the I-15 split in Box Elder County to the Utah-Idaho boarder.
Related:
High winds topple semi, force restrictions on I-80
High winds toppled a tractor trailer on Interstate 80 near Grantsville Wednesday afternoon.Hurricane force winds also wreaked havoc across the Wasatch Front Wednesday night. Woods Cross homeowner George Wiggins now has a wooden board for a front window thanks to those mighty wind gusts.
"I heard a 'ca-thud,' and then a big gust of wind blew my window out," Wiggins said. "[I] came out and glass was laying all over the place."
With sudden thunder and lightning bursts came transformer blows and blackouts. At one point, 21,000 customers were without power. The majority -- 17,000 -- of those were in the Salt Lake Valley. Sandy was hardest hit early in the evening after a power substation blew.
Meanwhile, Rocky Mountain Power says 2,000 customers were without in the counties north of Salt Lake, and 250 customers reported outages from Utah County south.
Winds went above 90 miles per hour in some areas, blowing the snow sideways. But, as Wiggins says, welcome to Utah in February.
The good news about this storm is that it will drop only minimal amounts of precipitation on the valley floors.
"What can you do? It's that time of year folks. Take it easy," he said.
The good news about this storm, which is expected to linger into Thursday, is that it will drop only minimal amounts of precipitation on the valley floors.
Brian McInerney, hydrologist with the National Weather Service, said the "well-timed storm," ends a dry spell in Utah for the first half of February because of a high pressure system that has been parked over the state.
The storm signals a change in the weather pattern, he added, with storm events that could dominate for the remainder of the month.
The low-density snow that will be dumped in Utah's mountains will add to an already ample snowpack — that while eroded over the last two weeks — has stood up reasonably well.
"This will freshen what we already have," said Randy Julander with the Utah Snow Survey.
Utah's basins are hovering around 125 percent to 145 of average snowpack, with the Virgin River coming in at 207 percent of average as of Wednesday.
Julander said the averages could bump up by 5 percent, leaving the state assured of having a healthy snowpack on April 1, the end of the water year.
"Anything after this will be icing on the cake," Julander said.
Check the complete forecast HERE.
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Story written with contributions from Jennifer Stagg and Amy Joi O'Donoghue.
