In Kansas, there's a saying that if you don't like the weather, wait a minute, and it will change. After experiencing early spring-like weather with temperatures in the 50s, the Kansas City metropolitan area and the surrounding communities were plunged into a deep freeze overnight on March 4 with blizzard-like conditions.
Rain fell throughout the day, and then, as temperatures dipped below freezing, the rain changed into snowfall. High winds howled throughout the night, and the Kansas City community woke up to icy roads, snow-packed streets, and in some cases, no power.
Evergy, which serves the Kansas City area, restored power to 180,000 of the 190,000 customers impacted by the blizzard by the afternoon of March 5. Communities with the most damage included the Kansas City metro area, Lawrence, Topeka and Shawnee, Kansas, and St. Joseph, Missouri. The utility said it would have the remainder of the outages restored by the evening of March 6.
The blizzard and high winds caused significant damage, such as downed wires across Evergy's service area. More than 1,000 employees and contractors worked 16-hour shifts in the field to get the power back on for the customers in the wake of the storm.
