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player ready...Though the storm that whipped through Chicago Friday had been predicted for days, it did not behave exactly as meteorologists had expected.
The season’s heaviest snow arrived later than forecasted and came in two waves, not one, and both happened to coincide with rush hours.
Even though the storm did not develop into the city-stopping monster some had feared, it created its own troubles and miseries. While morning commuters dodged the worst of it, they faced longer delays heading home at night.
Snowplow crews spent hours in their rigs waiting for the first flake to fall–which didn’t happen until nearly 3 a.m., six hours later than predicted.
But perhaps the most vexing situation was reserved for passengers at O’Hare International Airport, some of whom were stranded for more than 24 hours Friday.
Although the airport never closed, about 600 of the day’s 2,500 flights were canceled, according to Monique Bond, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Aviation.
Many passengers watching the “departures” monitors had been there Thursday night as well.
With the inbound storm expected to arrive Thursday evening, airlines had canceled about 25 percent of their flights.
But the storm turned out to have a worse on-time record than many airlines.
Stranded passengers who bedded down on cots and benches peered out airport windows at clear skies and dry runways until well past midnight.
After attending a business conference at McCormick Place this week, Hilda Murphey and her husband were supposed to catch a 10:05 p.m. Thursday flight on American Airlines back to their home in Houston.
That flight was canceled, as was the noon Friday flight on United Airlines on which they had been rebooked. Friday afternoon, they were hoping to get seats on a 6:15 p.m. Continental Airlines flight.
“It wasn’t snowing last night at 10,” said Hilda Murphey, 48. “We could have gone home.”
When the Friday evening Continental flight was full, the couple were rebooked to leave Saturday afternoon. The Murpheys then made the best of the delay and opted for a visit to the Field Museum.
“To the (passenger) who was bound for Houston, it may have seemed odd that the flight wasn’t leaving when there was no snow,” said American spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan. “But we made cancellations early and in anticipation of the storm. Once we cancel, we don’t reinstate.”
Fagan said that airlines cancel flights as early as possible to make things more, not less convenient for passengers.
“You cancel early in order to give people enough time to change their plans,” she said.
Fact is, even meteorologists were waiting at the gate for this storm.
The storm that came out of the West looked like a known quantity. The National Weather Service Thursday morning predicted a 100 percent chance of snow.
For some reason, though, the storm didn’t follow the schedule the computer models had set for it and chugged into town more than 6 hours late.
A low-pressure system motoring toward the Atlantic Ocean has been pushing this band of snow ahead of it like a plow.
What forecasters hadn’t fully expected was that after this first storm passed, moisture would whip around the low-pressure system and spawn snowfall on the back of the low.
“Sometimes the atmosphere just works that way,” said Jim Kaplan, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. “You get a break in clouds, the air is sinking and won’t support any precipitation.”
The late start for the snow meant that an entire shift of snowplow drivers had nothing to do Thursday night.
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Terry Levin, a spokesman for Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation, said that workers who had put in a regular day shift Thursday worked an overtime shift from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., at a total cost to the city of $36,000.
“We had storm warnings,” Levin said. “I can give you every forecast that said this stuff was going to start during the afternoon rush hour. Whenever snow is expected at rush hour we have to have our people ready.
“There was no other course to take considering the forecast,” Levin asserted. Failure to be in place in advance invites “an absolutely disastrous rush hour.”
By 6 p.m. Friday, 10 inches of snow had fallen at O’Hare, the city’s official measuring station. At least 2 or 3 more inches was expected before midnight, according to the weather service.
Previously, the heaviest snow of the season had been 5.9 inches on Jan. 29 and 30.
In McHenry County, where snowfall totals were higher, Sheriff Keith Nygren said the department responded to numerous calls for fender-benders and cars in ditches.
Up since 3 a.m. plowing the county roads just west of Woodstock, Haakon Helland said many motorists were having trouble adjusting their speed to what he called the first serious snowstorm of the winter.
“People just sort of get used to the roads being good, and they sort of get into trouble when we hit that first snowfall we just can’t keep up with,” said Helland, a county highway employee. “But it happens every year. Same old, same old.”
“This is not a crippling storm,” said Elmhurst streets Supt. Ken Neal. “It just has come at two bad times, the rush hour this morning and the rush hour this evening.”