The Fort Dodge area endured another day of frigid temperatures and roaring winds Friday, that in many places made driving conditions even more hazardous.

A long stretch of Interstate 35 was closed to traffic late Friday afternoon.

“The wind is a lot stronger than it was yesterday,” Webster County Engineer Jamie Johll told The Messenger on Friday afternoon.

“It’s hard to keep up with the paved roads,” he said. “We plow and then 45 minutes later, there’s a two-foot drift across the road right where we just plowed.”

There are places in the county with 6- to 8-foot snow drifts, Johll said.

The county plows remained on the paved roads on Friday, Johll said. But they hope to be able to do at least one pass of all the gravel roads on Saturday.

From the residents of Webster County, Johll asks for patience for the road crews.

“Everybody wants to get somewhere — it’s Christmas weekend,” he said. “The guys that are driving the snow plows have families and they’re away from their families on Christmas … trying to make the roads safer for everybody else. So, everybody step back a minute to appreciate what they do.”

The county plow drivers will likely be working all day on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day to clean up after this storm, Johll said.

On Friday afternoon, an ambulance from the Southwest Webster Emergency Medical Service out of Gowrie went off the road on U.S. Highway 169 north of Harcourt while transporting a patient, according to Webster County Sheriff’s Sgt. Joshua Van Waes.

“Out in the county on most hard surface roads, a lot of them are impassable with drifts in certain locations,” he said.

Van Waes said there weren’t really any areas of the county where the blowing snow wasn’t causing problems.

“Most people think they can get wherever they want to go, and then they get to a whiteout spot or get stuck in a drift that’s impassible and then that’s where the issue arises,” he said. “We wouldn’t advise anyone to travel anywhere.”

Van Waes said the Sheriff’s Office did respond to one accident on Friday morning, and they’ve helped a few stranded motorists.

A portion of U.S. Highway 169 in southern Webster County was closed to traffic late Friday afternoon.

Interstate 35 was closed between Ames and the Clear Lake/Mason City area at about 3 p.m. Friday and was to remain closed until further notice.

Iowa State Patrol troopers were focusing their efforts on Interstate 35 and U.S. Highway 20 on Friday, according to Trooper Paul Gardner.

“They are dealing with almost zero visibility because of the blowing and drifting snow,” he said. “They’re working a couple of crashes right now along the interstate.”

Troopers in the area were busy in the overnight hours from Thursday to Friday, Gardner said.

“I know overnight that they were dealing with a lot of cars that were sliding off into the ditch, so mostly motorist assists — getting stranded motorists, taking care of getting them someplace warm,” he said.

By noon on Friday, statewide the Iowa State Patrol responded to 673 motorist assists and 279 crashes. Only 26 of those crashes resulted in injuries and no fatalities were reported.

All flights at Fort Dodge Regional Airport were canceled Friday.

The runways and taxiways were clear of ice and snow, but the visibility was so poor that planes could not fly, according to Rhonda Chambers, the airport’s director of aviation.

“Our pavements are great, but you can’t see,” she said. “It’s a ground blizzard out here.”

Chamber urged anyone planning to fly out of Fort Dodge over the weekend to check the status of their flight on united.com or the United Airlines app.