Snow piles up in Upper Midwest

Associated Press

People fired up snowblowers and dug out their shovels Saturday after the first significant snowstorm of the season dumped between a few inches and 20 inches of snow across the Upper Midwest, blanketing a swath from South Dakota to Michigan.

The storm created hazardous travel conditions and caused more than 500 flight cancellations. A blast of much colder air was following the storm.

The National Weather Service said the snow, which first fell in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa on Friday, would head northeast into Canada late Saturday after moving through Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

In the southern Wisconsin town of Janesville, between 10 and 20 inches of snow had fallen by late Saturday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

Southside True Value Hardware manager Matt Krienke said business had been good in the days leading up to the storm but that it had become “very, very, very, very slick.”

“People who don’t need to drive don’t need to be out,” he said.

Snow totals in the northern suburbs of Chicago topped initial forecasts of 6 to 10 inches, said National Weather Service meteorologist Amy Seeley – 12.5 inches in Woodstock and 11.7 inches in Roscoe. It’s unusual for the area’s first snowfall of the season to dump more than 6 inches, Seeley said.

About 60 miles northwest of Chicago, the village of Capron had received 14.6 inches by Saturday morning, spurring village employee Robert Lukes into action clearing sidewalks with his snowblower in the community of about 1,400 people. He said the snowfall was wet, with a layer of slush underneath that made the work slow going.

“It’s a typical first snow for us, but it’s a pain in the butt. There’s quite a bit of it, and it’s kind of difficult plowing and snowblowing,” he said, adding, “It’s just another snowstorm in northern Illinois.”

Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport had 7.1 inches of snow by noon Saturday, which forced the cancellation of about 310 flights in and out of the busy airport, according to the tracking website FlightAware.com. Midway International Airport had canceled about 110 flights.