The Iowa Department of Transportation warned people in Des Moines and several other cities not to travel because of the hazardous conditions.
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Flight-tracking website FlightAware.com showed more than 350 flights in and out of O’Hare worldwide Airport had been canceled as of Saturday afternoon.
The storm produced an unrelenting band of heavy snow that hit McHenry and Lake counties particularly hard.
In the southern Wisconsin town of Janesville, somewhere around 10 and 20 inches of snow had fallen by late Saturday evening, the weather service said.
Matt Krienke, a hardware store manager, said business had been good leading up to the storm, but road conditions and sidewalks had become “very, very, very, very slick”.
He added that people who don’t need to drive don’t need to be out.
Seeley says it’s not often the Chicago area’s first snowfall of the season dumps more than six inches of snow.
The snow is pushing into northern IN and parts of MI after dumping more than a foot on Chicago’s northern suburbs. It’s topped only by 12 inches of snow that fell on November 25-26, 1895.
The weather service reported temperatures in single- and low double-digits on Sunday in northern IL, including Chicago, where residents were digging out of more than 11 inches of snow – the highest November total in 120 years.
In Chicago, O’Hare worldwide Airport is expected to break a record for snowfall on this date.
Midway global Airport, which is in the southeast part of Chicago, only had about 100 departing and arriving flights that had been canceled by Saturday morning. “It’s just another snowstorm in northern IL”. But it also fashioned a wintry backdrop to the annual Magnificent Mile Lights Festival, transporting Chicagoans into a life-sized holiday snow globe. The previous record for a two-day snowfall in Beloit was 3 inches in 1996.
Temperatures plunged behind the front. But operations were expected to return to normal on Sunday with only a few cancellations.
At least 8 inches of snow were likely in much of the Upper Midwest during Saturday, the Weather Channel 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.
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The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Watch, which goes into effect at 11 am on Tuesday lasting until 11 pm on Wednesday.
