From the comfort of a living room it was a wonderland.
But for anyone trying to get around, Tuesday morning’s snowfall of up to 5 inches, synchronized with rush hour, was a nightmare.
Blowing flakes, slick patches and fender-benders turned expressway commutes into exercises in frustration. Driving from downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport took 2 hours and 20 minutes.
And at O’Hare, 300 flights were canceled.
Despite plenty of plow trucks and road salt, the precipitation tied up the Chicago area as if it were some Sun Belt city hit by a freak storm.
The reason was timing, officials said.
Since winter’s onset, “this is the first time it’s come right smack dab at the beginning of the morning commute,” said Michelle Damico, an Illinois State Toll Highway Authority spokeswoman.
“We had freezing rain until 4 a.m. and then, voila, the sky opened up . . . We just got walloped from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m.”
Tuesday’s storm was a moderate addition to a relatively dry winter, said Bill Nelson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The area had been running well below the January average of 11.3 inches of snow, Nelson said. Tuesday’s accumulation brought the first month of 2004 to that level, he said. More snow is expected Thursday.
The northern and far northwest suburbs were hit hardest. As of 10 a.m., the city of McHenry had the highest 24-hour snow accumulation in the area: 5 inches, the weather service reported. McHenry County sheriff’s deputies handled nearly 50 accidents during the storm, a five-fold increase from a typical morning, Capt. David Shepherd said.
Just after midnight, a full fleet of 300 Illinois Department of Transportation trucks was plowing area expressways, and all 261 trucks in Chicago’s fleet had been deployed, officials said.
“We knew that with the time Mother Nature decided to grace us with her presence, it was going to be a disaster,” said IDOT spokeswoman Kim Morreale.
At the morning’s low point, it took drivers 2 hours, 12 minutes to drive the Eisenhower Expressway from the Loop to Thorndale Avenue in Itasca, Morreale said–the average speed of a bicycle. From Tower Road on the Edens Expressway to downtown took 2 hours, she said.
State police reported dozens of crashes, none serious.
“It was not good,” said Hardim Daniel, a cashier at a Near North Side parking lot. “I was 45 minutes late to work.” So were his regular customers, he added.
At O’Hare, about 300 flights were canceled Tuesday morning, said Monique Bond, an Aviation Department spokeswoman, largely because of weather conditions in the northeast. At Midway, 16 flights were canceled, she said. Delays ranged in the hours.
“For the stationary, Tuesday’s storm had its charms.
Snow blanketed the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe while it snarled the adjacent Edens Expressway.
“From a plant’s perspective, we have a big smile on our face,” said Boyce Tankersley, a garden manager. “First, the snow provides insulation. But it also makes the plants look good. From an aesthetics standpoint, the gardens look magical right now.”
