Photo by George Lauby Snow accumulates in the 300 block of N. Eastman in North Platte, 1:40 a.m. Friday

Photo by George Lauby Cody Calhoun (Maxwell football player) clears a driveway Friday afternoon.

Courtesy Photo/Image North Platte street and partially cleared sidewalk, Friday afternoon.

Courtesy Photo/Image A tree fell over the drive-up mail boxes near downtown (looking south).

Courtesy Photo/Image Downtown post office mailboxes, looking north.

Extremely wet, heavy snow fell thoughout the night Thursday, leaving a heavy blanket of 12-15 inches on trees, streets, roads and cropfields already soaked by several hours of light rain.

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The heavist snow fell in a lazy-Y-shaped area from Sutherland to Curtis and Sutherland to Merna, according to the National Weather Service in North Platte.

Wind gusts up to 35 miles an hour built drifts 2-3 feet high in rural areas.

Both U.S. Highway 30 and Interstate-80 were closed all day Friday from North Platte west into Wyoming.

City crews went to work on streets at 2:30 a.m. Friday, but by 4 p.m. had only cleared 70 percent of the city's 53 main emergency routes. Public Service Director Wes Meyer hoped the rest of the routes would be cleared by 7 p.m.

"It's going real slow," he said. "The snow is heavy and hard to push."

The plows pushed snow into piles 4-6 feet high on the edges of streets.

Lt. Rich Hoaglund of the North Platte Police advised residents to stay home Friday and Friday night.

"Most side streets are impassable," he said. "It takes a good four-wheel-drive to get around, and I mean a good one."

Meyer said crews would clear downtown streets Friday night and probably start on some residential streets Saturday. But temperatures are expected to reach the mid-50s Saturday and Sunday, which he hoped would melt much of the snow.

The snow was part of slow-moving storm that spread from the Rocky Mountains all the way to east central Nebraska. A half-inch of rain fell in North Platte ahead of the snow.

By the time snow started in North Platte, a similar storm system had dumped several inches of snow in northern Nebraska. There was a report of 12 inches near Rushville in Sheridan County early Thursday evening.

Farmers continue to wait for just a few days, if not a few hours, of harvest weather. The corn harvest has yet to begin in the North Platte area.

The amount of snowfall in October is by far the most since records began to be kept 135 years ago.

Three weeks ago, an Oct. 9 storm dumped 14-16 inches of snow in North Platte, which at the time was the biggest October snowfall in 113 years.

Until now, the most snow on the ground at Halloween in North Platte during the last 135 years was five inches, back in 1959, the weather service said.