Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip: It started on Michigan Avenue, aboard a CTA 146 express bus, and ended in a seven-hour standstill in blinding snow on Lake Shore Drive. The cell phone batteries were fading by the time a path could be cleared for the rescue bus, and no, there were no bathrooms. Top that.
Yes, the blizzard of 2011 is the stuff of legend. Future generations will tire of hearing of that three-hour crawl from the Loop to Lincoln Square via taxi on Groundhog Eve. We’ll regale our great-grandkids with stories about spending the night in the parking lot of the tollway oasis because the ramps were blocked. We’ll recount the dramatic rescue of the hapless motorists who got stuck in ever-deeper drifts alongside that storied bus – near-victims of their own folly, having scoffed at warnings to stay off The Drive.
Those of us whose biggest complaint was an hourlong wait on the ‘L’ platform while five or six packed trains departed without us will secretly long for bragging rights to a 5 a.m. tow.
Heck, our friends in warmer climes are already tired of hearing about this storm, but too bad. Florida had its 78 degrees Tuesday. We had THUNDERSNOW.
We had 70 mph winds.
We had lightning reflecting so brightly off all that whiteness that it lit up the streets like broad daylight at 11 p.m.
It snowed sideways, it snowed up, it snowed in circles. It snowed so hard you couldn’t see across the street, and it blew so hard that it seemed most of the predicted snowfall remained airborne well past midnight. By morning Wednesday it was officially the fifth-deepest pileup on record, and by early afternoon it was creeping up on second.
Throughout it all we had Tom Skilling, the voice of calm in an awesome and frightening storm. The man is a godsend. Believe it.
Here’s what else we had: A snow day. Unlike certain parts of the country, where a 2-inch snowfall recently closed the schools for four straight days, it’s not unusual for a Chicagoland youngster to make it all the way from K to 12 without ever missing a day because of weather. Wednesday’s snow holiday was the first since 1999 for Chicago Public Schools. And now, two of them in a row! For Oak Park and River Forest High School, it was the fifth snow day since 1873. Take that, Atlanta.
Yes, we’ll all do plenty of finger-pointing. We’ve already gotten a head start. Why wasn’t Lake Shore Drive closed sooner? Why did the CTA have a good day (at least its trains did) and Metra have a bad day?
Just remember, this was historic. Try to keep that in mind as we dig ourselves out, repeatedly, over the next several days. Avoid driving, be prepared for more transit mayhem and avoid parking skirmishes at all costs. Be patient with public servants who haven’t gotten around to plowing your alley and can’t seem to figure out where they had your car towed. Endure it all with grace, and take notes. This is epic.
How often do we get the chance to brag about the weather in February?
