A stubborn, slow-moving winter storm dumped a mixture of snow and ice across parts of western Kansas, stranding travelers, leaving thousands without power and prompting a disaster declaration.

The heaviest accumulation was in Sharon Springs, which reported 24 inches as of 6 p.m. Another 3 to 4 inches of snow was expected before the storm moves east and weakens late Saturday and early today, said Brad Mickelson, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Goodland.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius declared a disaster emergency Saturday afternoon that will free up resources to help 39 counties in northwest and southwest Kansas.

“Local community resources can quickly become overwhelmed with a storm of this magnitude, so the state disaster emergency declaration will make state resources available quickly to assist where necessary,” Sebelius said in a news release.

Wind gusts of up to 35 mph contributed to snow drifts of up to 15 feet deep, which hampered efforts to clear roads and restore power.

Westbound lanes of Interstate 70 were closed at Salina because of dwindling hotel accommodations, said Ron Kaufman, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Transportation.

“We just want to caution folks to be patient and not bully their way into the storm,” Kaufman said. “It’s important that folks realize that they may not be able to find a place to stay if they drive into the area.”

He said hotels were filling up in Oakley, WaKeneey and Hays.

The Days Inn along the interstate in Hays had “pretty much” sold out by about 1:30 Saturday afternoon, said assistant manager Kale Schrader. Many of the guests had spent Friday night at the hotel and extended their stays because of the impassable road conditions to the west.

He said he called around to see if other hotels had vacancies, and the larger chains in the city also were full.

Besides the road closures, several utilities and electric cooperatives were battling widespread outages.

Ice coats stubble in a field surrounding rows of tractor-trailers parked along a side access road North of Hays on Saturday after severe weather closed Interstate 70 from Hays westbound.

Sunflower Electric Power Corp. spokesman Steve Miller said a combination of ice and strong winds had downed an estimated 3,000 poles and numerous high-voltage transmission lines.

The utility provides electricity to six rural electric cooperatives in western Kansas, and Miller declined to estimate how many of the 120,000 people its members serve were without power.

“I’ve worked for Sunflower for 24 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Miller said. “It spans all the way across the area we provide serve to.”

He said the utility’s coal-powered Holcomb plant was off-line for more than three hours overnight Saturday because the widespread outages left the power the plant was producing little place to go.

One of the utility’s members, Wheatland Electric, reported that some crews were using four-wheel drive tractors or crawler tractors to pull line trucks through the snow and mud and reach downed lines.

Aquila Inc. spokesman Al Butkus said about 7,000 of the utility’s 70,000 electric customers in Kansas were without power. The hardest-hit area was Dodge City, where about 4,200 of the utility’s customers were without power. He said the ongoing storm was making it difficult for crews to restore power.

Midwest Energy Inc. spokesman Bob Helm estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 of the utility’s customers were without power. The cooperative serves 45,000 electric customers in parts of 41 counties in central and northwest Kansas.

“We have a lot of folks in rural areas, a lot of folks we can’t even get to yet,” Helm said. “We’re hearing there are 8- to 10-foot-high drifts. Once they get a road cleared to get a truck through, it closes back up. It’s very slow going.”