Midwest braces for winter storm

It’s not common for the Chicago area’s first snowfall of the season to dump more than six inches, Seeley said.

Locally, numerous crashes were reported at about 10 p.m. Saturday as temperatures dipped below freezing.

A few minutes earlier, a jackknifed semi blocked westbound Anthony Wayne Trail on the I-475 overpass.

The storm system was moving east and will last through Saturday evening, when it tails through MI, according to Richard Otto, lead forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center.

On Interstate 80, a semi-truck struck a snowplow, Ludwig said.

National Weather Service meteorologist Amy Seeley told AP that it is unusual for the area’s first snowfall to dump more than six inches.

Southside True Value Hardware administrator Matt Krienke expressed that business had been great in the days leading up to the storm, yet that it had turned out to be exceptionally smooth.

“A lot of people complaining about it, nobody wants to be out in it”, he said. The 11 inches of snow that fell in Chicago yesterday was the city’s highest November total in 120 years.

In Capron, Illinois, about 60 miles northwest of Chicago, village employee Robert Lukes was clearing sidewalks Saturday after more than a foot of snow fell. He said the snowfall was wet, with a layer of slush underneath that made the work slow going.

The Illinois Department of Transportation is reporting snow and ice covering roads in northwestern Illinois as the season’s first winter storm rolls in.

Flight- tracking website FlightAware.com showed Saturday morning that about 250 flights in and out of Chicago’s O’Hare worldwide Airport had been canceled.

In the northern IN city of LaPorte, the storm had dropped about four inches of snow by noon Saturday. The airport had 4 inches of snow early Saturday.

Residents in the northern IL counties saw the most snow. “Most people aren’t even fazed by it”, she said.

The National Weather Service said the snow would continue in IL and in on Saturday, as well as move into MI before heading northeast into Canada late Saturday. Grand Rapids had about 3 inches.

Temperatures plunged behind the front.

Swaths of the Midwest got a healthy dose of winter Saturday with up to 17 inches of snow hitting metropolitan Chicago, officials said.

Accumulation in the area could be as much as 4 to 7 inches.