The Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation was deploying more than 200 snow plows Wednesday morning to keep the main streets plowed and salted when the storm hits.
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About 860 flights were canceled at O’Hare International Airport by Wednesday evening.
More than 310 flights had been canceled at Midway, including all Southwest Airline flights. The city had about half of its 300 snowplows on stand-by to aid the evening rush hour.
Powerful winds blowing off of Lake Michigan could help to bury the area in up to 45 centimetres of snow.
As much as 8 inches of snow had fallen in Missouri by 9 a.m. local time Wednesday morning, according to storm totals from the National Weather Service. Blizzard warnings were posted for counties in eastern IL and northwestern Indiana. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the snow blowing that you can’t see the traffic lights”. A powerful storm is moving through parts of the Midwest could dump more than a foot of snow in places. The storm is expected to intensify later Wednesday and leave the highest snow amounts in the state’s Thumb region.
MI closed many state government offices, but kept its Emergency Operations Center open to manage the water crisis in the city of Flint and monitor the storm.
Twin Lakes School Corp.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s appearance in Lansing, to speak about a state House plan to restructure the Detroit Public Schools, was also canceled.
Fletcher says he’s glad he did because the roads are covered in ice and the snow is falling hard.
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Bands of heavy snow extending from St. Louis to Chicago caused several semis to jackknife and power lines to fall on IL highways. The National Weather Service said white-out conditions would be likely in portions of the state, as well as near-zero visibility and unsafe travel conditions. The strong winds – measured at 67 miles per hour in Gary – built 15- to 20-foot waves on Lake Michigan that smashed into the IL and in shoreline, creating flooding. “It’s just kind of cool to look at when you’re running, it’s a nice effect, a nice calming effect actually”, said jogger Kris Powers.
