Snow justifies early decision to shut down, officials say

With barely a trace of fresh snow on the ground by the time most people went to bed Tuesday night, McHenry County officials' decision to close all county facilities Wednesday and give most county workers the day off was starting to look premature and perhaps even a bit foolish.

But by 5 p.m. Wednesday, it looked like genius.

The severe storm that passed over the region Wednesday, dropping as much as 14 inches of snow over parts of central McHenry County by early evening, justified the decision to close county government for the day, officials said.

"I think the decision was 100 percent right," County Board Chairman Ken Koehler said. "The number one priority is public safety, and if we had one person killed on the road because they were trying to get to one of our buildings in this weather, it would have been a shame."

County officials made the call to close all facilities, including the courthouse, Tuesday afternoon, long before heavy snow arrived in the area.

The decision, Undersheriff Gene Lowery said, kept about 1,300 county workers off the roads, not to mention hundreds of residents who would have been traveling to and from the county government center for court.

"With the volume of activity we're witnessing out there in terms of vehicles in ditches, accidents and stranded motorists, it was a wise decision," he said.

Weather closings are rare, but not unheard of, for McHenry County. The most recent before Wednesday occurred on Dec. 1, 2006, when a storm dumped more than 10 inches on the region.

Koehler said Wednesday he was willing to take the heat if the dire storm predictions turned out wrong and county government unnecessarily was halted.

"If the snow didn't come, we would have looked like fools," Koehler said. "That was the chance we were taking.

"Fortunately for us," he added, "it didn't turn out that way."