Grindhouse Café owner Gabe Mauch wants to know why on Earth people were out and about Saturday.
Not that he wasn’t grateful; the Griffith café was hopping all day as Winter Storm Bella dumped a whole lot of wet, drippy, heavy snow on Chicagoland starting Friday night. But when he went out to run an errand, he realized how much he would’ve rather been at home buried under the blankets.
“I’ve been out for the past 45 minutes, and I don’t know why anyone would be out if they didn’t have to be,” Mauch said. “All day we were like, ‘Why are all of these people here?’ But I guess people get stir-crazy and want to get coffee or hot chocolate as comfort when it’s bad out. It’s weird.”
By Saturday afternoon, Northwest Indiana was skidding its way through the mess.
John Herrera, manager for Waffco Towing out of Portage, said he’d taken at least 10 calls by Saturday afternoon, and with temps expected to dip into the low teens overnight, he wasn’t expecting any sort of reprieve.
“None of our guys are out of town right now because – and I hate to say this – (the first snow) is our best time of the season,” Herrera said. “And it’s been pretty much as expected – pulling people out of ditches, cars sliding into things and each other. And this is an earlier start to this than we usually see.”
If Waffco’s drivers were inundated with calls, the Indiana State Police were absolutely slammed with them. Lowell Post Commander Cpl. Zack Beaver said they’d received at least 75 calls throughout the day, and, like Waffco, weren’t seeing any end in sight.
“From 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., and then from 2 p.m. to about 5 p.m., it was really bad, but it’s been nonstop. We’ve had a dozen calls in the last hour,” Beaver said. “Thankfully, there haven’t been any serious accidents, just a few with complaints of pain injuries.”
The problem, however, hasn’t necessarily been the roads, Beaver added.
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“The roadways aren’t even that bad yet, but people are either driving too fast or not paying attention, and then they end up spinning out,” he said. “You have to drive slowly in this kind of weather.”
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning through 8 p.m. Saturday, with some of that snow heavy at times.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.