1600 hours
The 0800 density reports from St. Louis Control were below the 14,000 mark in all lanes in the one-hundred-mile block west of the city . That was to be expected . They listened to the eastbound densities peaking at twenty-six thousand vehicles in the same block , all heading into the metropolis and their jobs . The 0800 , 1200 and 1600 hours density reports also carried the weather forecasts for a five-hundred-mile radius from the broadcasting control point . Decreasing temperatures with light to moderate snow was in the works for Car 56 for the first couple of hundred miles west of St. Louis , turning to almost blizzard conditions in central Kansas . Extra units had already been put into service on all thruways through the midwest and snow-burners were waging a losing battle from Wichita west to the Rockies around Alamosa , Colorado . Outside the temperature was below freezing ; inside the patrol car it was a comfortable sixty-eight degrees .