A powerful helicopter needed to drop the team was grounded by the weather at an airport 40 miles away. A blowing snow advisory and howling winds whipped through the search headquarters here, about a mile below the snowy mountainside where shards of gray metal were spotted Sunday.
The weather was expected to improve today. But Air Force Col. Denver Pletcher said the new snow cover on the jagged, steep slope could make it too dangerous for the crew to lower searchers.
"We weren't able to find it in the first place because of the snow ... fresh snow is the big problem," Pletcher said.
The Air Force believes the wreckage is the $9 million A-10 Thunderbolt warplane that vanished April 2. But there was no sign of Capt. Craig Button, who was at the controls when the the plane left a Tucson, Ariz., base on a training mission and veered north toward Colorado. The site in the central Rockies, 15 miles southwest of Vail, is some 800 miles off course.
Since 1975, Congress has paid states and counties to collect child support from so-called "deadbeat dads," but the program has had a troubled history. Nationwide, regular payments are being collected in only 18 percent of the cases.
Two years ago, a U.S. Appeals Court for the West Coast cleared the way for a class-action suit filed on behalf of 300,000 Arizona parents who were demanding improvements in a floundering program. The understaffed Arizona state agency was then collecting money for less than 5 percent of the parents who turned to it for help.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles, writing for the Appeals Court, said the parents had documented "a range of administrative abuses extending from simple incompetence and bureaucratic bungling to shockingly callous indifference."
The final panel of 12 jurors and six alternates was tentatively scheduled to be picked today after U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch hears pending motions. The judge was considering selecting an anonymous panel to hear the case against Timothy McVeigh.
A total of 99 people - from unemployed contractors to a wealthy businessman - have been brought in for questioning since March 31. Six were dismissed in open court and an unknown number were excused after private sessions between the judge and attorneys.