Missouri and Kansas prepare for winter storm

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Kansas and Missouri braced Monday for more snow, even as they worked to clean up from an earlier round of winter weather.

The snow will begin falling across much of Kansas between midnight and 3 a.m. Tuesday and then rapidly move eastward into Missouri around daybreak, National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Bailey said. The snowfall is expected to spread across most of Missouri, except the southeast corner of the state, by early Wednesday afternoon.

Forecasts call for the western third of Kansas to get 2 to 4 inches of snow. Snowfall amounts will increase heading eastward, with the heaviest accumulations of 8 to 10 inches expected in northeastern Kansas, Bailey said.

In Missouri, widespread 6- to 8-inch amounts are anticipated across the northern part of the state. Far south-central and southwest Missouri are expected to get no more than 3 inches of snow. Lesser amounts of snow are expected in eastern Missouri, with the Weather Service predicting about 3 inches for the St. Louis region.

As the snowfall tapers off from Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning, wind gusts of 20 to 30 mph are possible over most of Kansas and northern Missouri. By Thursday morning, temperatures are expected to drop to 10 to 15 degrees below zero along the Iowa border, with wind chills as low as negative 25 degrees possible.

Schools across the Kansas City area were already closed on Monday after last week's storm laid a sheet of ice that hasn't melted.

Winter weather already caused problems in southeast Missouri Sunday night. One to 3 inches of snow fell in the Cape Girardeau area. A Missouri Department of Transportation truck turned over on icy U.S. 61 at New Hamburg, Mo., the Southeast Missourian reported. No one was hurt.

It was among several accidents reported in the region Sunday night. Most were fender-benders and slide-offs. Concerns about ice-covered roadways persisted into Monday in southeast Missouri.

Bailey said another storm system is expected to hit Friday night and continue into Saturday, producing more snowfall across the two states.