DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Fierce winds ripped away the roof of a police station, thousands of people lost power and drivers stuck by closed highways settled in to wait as storms swept out of the West to the nation's midsection yesterday.

Much of the Upper Midwest was covered in deep snow, and strong winds last night were expected to create blizzard conditions. The storm had already blanketed much of the mountain west and drenched Southern California with rain.

Ice was the problem yesterday morning in Oklahoma, where Interstate 40 was closed for about 25 miles between Clinton and Elk City. Mitch Dodson, a trucker hauling soda pop out of Durango, Colorado, to Virginia, was waylaid at the Travel America plaza near the town of Sayre in western Oklahoma.

"It's just a sheet of ice from Amarillo to here," Dodson said. "It's a disaster."

With travel likely to get worse, officials were warning residents in parts of the west and Midwest to stay close to home. Blizzard warnings were issued for most of Iowa as well as eastern Nebraska, southern Minnesota and southern Wisconsin.

Some schools closed before the worst of the storm was expected to hit so that school buses wouldn't slip on slick roads.

In Buffalo, New York, meteorologists expect the storm to dump three or more feet of snow between today and Saturday in the mainly rural snow belts east of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. They also urged residents to deflate blow-up Santas, warning that wind gusts near 60 mph could sweep away all but the most securely attached holiday decorations.

The storm had hit much of the West on Monday, bringing subzero wind chills in Washington state and heavy snow that closed schools and government offices in Reno, Nevada. In the Phoenix area, fierce wind brought down power lines, left four hospitals temporarily without power and created wide outages. Freezing temperatures in Oregon were suspected in one death.

Big rigs were left jackknifed across highways in several states.

And more snow was coming: The National Weather Service said the upper elevations of the Sierra mountains could get up to 3 feet, with up to 4 feet forecast for the mountains of southern Utah.

Two people were killed in traffic accidents blamed on slick conditions in New Mexico. Winds of up to 100 mph were reported on St. Augustin pass between Las Cruces and White Sands Missile Range, and the powerful gusts ripped away the roof of the White Sands Missile Range's police station.

Officials in northern Arizona closed stretches of Interstate 17 and I-40 for part of the day, saying some areas were snow-packed and visibility levels were near zero. The storm dumped more than 20 inches of snow over Flagstaff, more than four times the record of 5 inches set in 1956.

Cold temperatures also were threatening California crops. The chilly weather hit with only about 10 percent to 15 percent of the navel and mandarin orange crops harvested, said Bob Blakely, director of industrial relations for the California Citrus Mutual.

"We've got a lot on the line," said Blakely. "Both of them combined you're probably looking at over a billion dollars in fruit hanging out there on the trees."

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Associated Press Writers Justin Juozapavicius in Oklahoma City, Kevin McGill in New Orleans, Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Ariz., Nigel Duara in Iowa City, Iowa, and Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee contributed to this report.