Hampshire woman, four dogs stuck on Route 47 since 6:30 p.m. Tuesday

Jennifer Boznos is only five miles from her home in Hampshire, but she's been sitting on Route 47 since 6:30 p.m. Tuesday night.

That was when she came up along a line of cars and stopped.

“I haven't moved since 6:30 p.m. (Tuesday) night,” Boznos said on her cell phone this morning. “It's been a real rough night.”

She said she has sat in her car, running the engine intermittently on and off through the night, to keep her and her four dogs warm.

She is stuck in a line of about 40 cars just south of I-90.

A dog trainer, she was trying to get herself and the dogs from Chicago to her house to lock herself in for the night to avoid the blizzard. She said the commute is usually about an hour, but was in her car on her second hour when she was trapped in the line of cars.

“A group of snowmobiles came by last night and tried to rescue me and some other people here,” she said. “But, I couldn't leave my dogs alone in the car overnight. They'd freeze to death.”

She said she has left her car only for moments at a time, once to walk the dogs, then other times to clear snow off her tailpipe to make sure the auto doesn't fill up with carbon monoxide.

She said she was stopped on Route 47 because, rescuers told her, there were four foot snow drifts about a mile up the road and cars couldn't get through.

“We are all piled up like dominoes,” she said. “I'm a winter person and I like winter sports, but this is cold. It's not the cold, but the wind is brutal.”

She said her hope is that, now with the sun up, rescue is eminent.

“I'll starve to death if we are stuck here for another night,” she said. “Hopefully, with the snow letting up, they'll come along soon.”