Just as pre-holiday travel began to pick up, a serious snowstorm swept across the Great Plains states early Tuesday morning. The Associated Press reported large sections of major highways were shut down Monday night, prompting nearly 100 rescue calls from drivers in Texas.

Meteorologists said 10 inches of snow fell on western Kansas, and several more on top of strong winds were expected in the "whiteout conditions."

Six people were killed in traffic accidents related to the storm, including four in New Mexico and a prison guard and inmate whose prison van crashed in eastern Colorado.

From the AP:

Colorado Highway Patrol trooper Nate Reid said the freezing rain and fog came in so fast on Monday that it caught a lot of drivers unaware.
"I can't even count how many rollovers we had," Reid said

Snowpack and icy conditions forced the closure of roadways across western and southwestern Kansas, including a western section of the I-70, the main thoroughfare that traverses the state.

"Southwest Kansas is pretty much shut down completely," Derek Latham, a dispatcher for the Kansas Highway Patrol in Salina said early Tuesday. "I have one trooper who almost went into a ditch this morning, and he came across four other cars that went into a ditch. That was just this morning."

The storm is a dramatic shift from the fairly mild fall felt across the country—much of the region affected had experienced temps in the mid-60s just a day before, according to the AP.

Conditions had settled down by late morning, but the weather services said it expected  blowing snow and single digit temperatures after dark—a discouraging prediction for those hoping to make their way to Grandma's house tonight.

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