Chicago area residents including those in the Fox Valley devoted much of Sunday to shoveling out from under a heavy snowfall.
In a statement Sunday morning, Aurora officials said “the rate of snowfall last night, the continued snowfall this morning and the persistent snowdrifts caused by wind gusts have made snow removal a challenge, but the team continues the work of keeping the roads as passable as possible.”
The bulk of the weekend’s snow accumulation began Saturday night and continued into Sunday, National Weather Service Meteorologist Casey Sullivan said.
The weather service looks at O’Hare Airport year-to-year records for data and the last memorable snow event of this kind was Nov. 20-21 in 2015 when 11.2 inches of the white stuff blanketed the region.
As of noon Sunday O’Hare Airport recorded 8.8 inches.
“It’s been several years since there’s been a snowstorm this big that has affected O’Hare Airport. The snow totals in Kane County were a little bit less than further east in Cook, DuPage and Will counties,” Sullivan said.
Elburn recorded 9 inches of snow, while in Batavia there was 6.1 inches of snow by noon Sunday.
St. Charles had snowfall amounts of 7.4 inches and North Aurora had 5.8 inches as of Sunday morning.
In Kendall County, Yorkville had reports of 6 inches as of early Sunday morning.
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“The accumulating snow was mainly east of Kane County. The bulk of the snow fell Saturday evening into Sunday morning,” Sullivan said.
A storm system moved from the south due east across south central Illinois into central Indiana during the storm.
“We were on the northern side of the system and the system was very rich with moisture,” Sullivan said.
The moisture content made the snow heavy, he said.
“The storm system had a lot of moisture to work with so because of that we ended up getting a persistent-moderate at times heavy snow,” Sullivan said.
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.