Students across the North Shore celebrated a sunny but cold snow day on Monday after a blizzard closed local schools.
Winnetka resident Stuart Schweidel spent the morning with his daughter Ruthie, 8, at the snow hill off Hibbard Road in Winnetka.
“I kind of expected she would have a snow day, so I decided we would come sledding,” said Schweidel, who said he was also enjoying a “snow day” away from his job as an actuary.
“It’s perfect…everyone is here,” added Sara Knight, who arrived at the Winnetka sled hill with her three children, ages 8, 6 and 2.
“It’s so much more fun when it’s a ‘snow day’ off from school, rather than a ‘cold day,'” she said.
Officials at New Trier Township High School District 203 said that while the snow ended before Monday morning, school was canceled due to anticipated hazardous travel conditions throughout the area.
In addition, the high school’s staff members who live either in the city or in distant suburbs would not be able to “dig out in time even for a late start,” New Trier Township High School District 203 Superintendent Linda Yonke wrote in an email.
Parents and students were asked to check the high school’s website for additional information regarding extracurricular activities on Monday.
Local elementary school districts were also closed Monday, but along with New Trier, re-opened on Tuesday.
With village public works crews plowing local streets throughout Sunday night, officials in Wilmette, Winnetka and Glencoe said that they had not experienced any serious problems or road accidents attributed to the heavy snowfall.
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“Crews are hard at it … a lot of snow to move,” Glencoe Village Manager Philip Kiraly said. “Streets have remained open throughout, though it is admittedly slow going on some side streets. We urge our residents to travel with care.”
In Wilmette, where officials said the lake effect snowfall added up to roughly 18 inches of snow in some areas of the village, public works crews began gearing up for Sunday’s blizzard-like weather on Friday night.
“Our public works crews began Friday by filling the snow plows’ fuel tanks and making sure they were all loaded with salt before the snow even started to fall,” Assistant Village Manager Michael Braiman said.
“They were all prepared and hit the streets, ready to go, as soon as the snow started falling,” Braiman said. “Our public works crews worked around the clock, 12 hours on, and 12 hours off, throughout Sunday night and into Monday, and they did an outstanding job.”
Still, Braiman said village crews can face challenges when trying to clear cul-de-sacs, dead-end streets and Wilmette’s downtown business district – tasks which often require officials to hire an outside contractor to haul away the towering snow piles.
Braiman said officials do not yet know how much the recent snow storm will cost the village in terms of overtime for public works crews and the tab for the services of outside contractors.
But given this year’s mild winter, Braiman said, “prior to this recent storm, we were below budget and we still have plenty of salt.”
“Our salt dome was 100 percent full, and we’re still confident we’ll have access to our supply for the rest of the winter,” Braiman said.
For Winnetka’s public works crews, last year’s horrendous winter weather arrived with a bit of a silver lining – a crash course in what one official called, “how to attack major storm events.”
“Last year’s weather really laid the ground work,” said James Bernahl, Winnetka’s assistant director of public works.
“You start by making sure you’re keeping the main roads open, then you focus on the side streets, and then we start with the sidewalks,” Bernahl said, adding that village crews also shovel sidewalks in both commercial districts and residential neighborhoods.
Given that Winnetka had roughly 18 inches of snow falling between Sunday and Monday, Bernahl said once all the roads and sidewalks are cleared, public works crews will then begin to scoop up the excess snow piles and move them to designated empty parcels and fields in town.
“Our salt dome is pretty well stocked, and we will start applying salt to the roads once they are all cleared, as you don’t want to waste salt,” Bernahl said.
Snow removal requires a more delicate touch at the Chicago Botanic Garden, which remains open year-round for people who enjoying walking the grounds at the 385-acre park.
Cindy Baker, manager of horticulture services, received the call at 4:30 a.m. Sunday to prepare for the blizzard and bring in as many staff members as possible.
“We use a combination of riding lawn mowers converted into snow removing equipment,” Baker said. “A lot of our staff comes in with regular walking snow-blowers.”
The workers open the critical areas first, where people arrive from cars and buildings. But “yesterday was pretty rough,” she said. “It was really hard to keep up.”
The park closed at 1 p.m. on Sunday, and reopened Monday at 10 a.m.
“We don’t salt the roads so we don’t get that black snow,” Baker said. “It’s stunning. It’s just a beautiful to walk around.”
In the parking lots, workers push the snow into lesser-used lots, then spread out the drifts over time so that they melt more quickly, she said.
Within the park, the workers carefully blow paths of snow to each side, and gently brush off newly fallen snow that has collected on evergreen limbs. Once the snow has frozen on the limbs, “you don’t want to touch the plant,” Baker said. “They actually do more damage trying to get snow off the plant.”
After completely removing snow from walking paths, workers lay down a combination of an ice melting product and angular sand, meaning the edges are rough and provide a more gritty texture.
“We make sure it is something that has very, very low levels of sodium chloride,” Baker said. “We don’t like salt on our plants. It causes a lot of damage.”
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