The southern Wisconsin city of Janesville is digging out after the wintry storm dumped between 10 and 20 inches of snow by Saturday afternoon.
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The storm made travel hazardous and caused more than 500 flight cancellations.
On Saturday alone, more than 275 arriving and departing flights were cancelled at Chicago O’Hare worldwide Airport, according to FlightStats.
Meteorologists say snow totals in the northern suburbs of Chicago topped initial forecasts of six to 10 inches – 12.5 inches in Woodstock and 11.7 inches in Roscoe. Where smaller-scale, more intense snowbands temporarily set up, we can’t rule out a few 1 inch per hour snowfall rates for a time.
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. There’s quite a bit of it and it’s kind of hard ploughing and snowblowing.
Iowa State Patrol Sgt. Nathan Ludwig said that troopers in northern and western Iowa were seeing many cars in ditches, especially near Mason City and Council Bluffs, according to ABC News.
Snow in the Midwest is canceling hundreds of flights.
However, a swath of moderate to locally heavy snow is still expected from northern Nebraska and southern South Dakota to MI.
“The lion’s share of our call load has been directly related to the weather”, he said, noting that many incidents of tree limbs contacting power lines resulted in sparking and small fires.
Frigid temperatures Saturday night are expected to follow the several inches of snow that felli in DeKalb County by Winter Storm Bella.
As the temperatures remain below freezing over the next two days, those piles of snow will turn into chunks of ice that get in the way of drivers, Warnock said. Grand Rapids had about 3 inches. Sioux Falls, S.D., 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.
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“In those areas, it is going to be a very tough travel day”, said National Weather Service meteorologist Bruce Terry in College Park, Maryland.
