Winter weather leads to 40-car pile-up in Iowa, people stranded by ice floes in Wisconsin

Thursday brought havoc to the roads in Iowa and left dozens of people stranded by ice floes in Wisconsin, with a powerful winter storm showing no signs of abating in the Midwest.

Whiteout conditions along Interstate 80 west of Newton, Iowa, led to a 40-vehicle pileup there, the state patrol said Thursday afternoon.

Troopers, who weren’t injured, were “going vehicle to vehicle to check on occupants,” the state patrol said on its Facebook page. There were a “few serious injuries and several minor injuries,” the post said.

Photos posted by the state patrol also showed tractor trailers turned on their side or jack-knifed, along with other cars and trucks, including State Trooper cars.

In Door County, Wisconsin, US Coast Guard personnel and local and state officials rescued 62 people from three separate ice floes, sheets of ice that had broken loose from the water’s frozen surface, the Coast guard said in a news release.

Rescue teams, airboats and helicopters were near the mouth of Sturgeon Bay after calls reporting cracks in the ice between groups of people out on the ice and the shore, CNN affiliate WLUK reported.

By early Thursday afternoon, 62 people had been rescued without any injuries, according to WLUK.

Thursday was a “curtain-raiser” for what the area is in for in the coming days, according to CNN Meteorologist Derek Van Dam.

Snow, forecast through Friday, is expected to be followed by a flash freeze, or rapidly falling temperatures.

It may get so cold overnight Saturday into Sunday that even car antifreeze may solidify, according to Van Dam.