After the snow, Midwest gets deep freeze

A deep freeze set in over the Midwest on Sunday with low temperatures figure in the single digits and a couple underneath zero, transforming the season’s first real snow into ice that made several streets tricky to travel.

National Weather Service meteorologist Bruce Sullivan says that Marengo, Ill. got 12 inches overnight and it continues to fall, while Chicago’s O’Hare global Airport had four inches of snow. In Elk Grove, 11.6 inches of snow had fallen by 1 p.m. Boone County’s Capron was hit with 18.5 inches of snowfall, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Mott.

The first snowfall of the season brought amounts ranging from a few inches to 20 from South Dakota through MI earlier in the weekend.

The low pressure system driving the storm is in Canada Sunday, leaving more cold temperatures in its wake.

It’s the second day of disruptions there caused by a pre-winter storm.

The southern Wisconsin city of Janesville is digging out after the wintry storm dumped between 10 and 20 inches of snow by Saturday afternoon.

Residents in the northern IL counties saw the most snow.

About 200 flights had been cancelled in and out of Chicago’s Midway worldwide Airport, according to FlightAware.com.

“My kids have been out here all morning”, said Steve Vilim, of Naperville, who was supervising his daughter Elena, 13, and son Teddy, age 7. Sioux Falls, South Dakota, reached 11 degrees Saturday and the town of Estherville in northern Iowa was even colder at 6 degrees with a wind chill of minus 4, the weather service said.

While winter has not officially begun, the shovels and snowblowers were out from South Dakota and southern Minnesota, to Iowa, Wisconsin and northern IL.

Snowfalls in northwest OH weren’t expected to come anywhere close to what fell in the Chicago area, but there was more than enough to turn unpaved surfaces white and make roads slick.