Fog rolls through area as residents prepare for flooding
Rapidly melting snow due to unseasonably warm weather wrapped Kane County in thick fog on Saturday.
And signs of flooding in Campton Hills prompted village officials to organize a sandbagging operation that's been full swing throughout the morning.
Nearly 20 volunteers were filling sandbags at the Campton Township Highway Department garage along Route 47, just north of Lily Lake Elementary School.
Campton Hills Trustee Laura Andersen, who helped organize the effort, estimated they had filled 600 by 11 a.m., and expected they would have 1,000 available. Adults and children, including boys from Boy Scout troops 9, 43, 21, 11, 46, 56 and 80. Teens from the Burlington Ag 4-H Club also helped.
As a second truckload of sand arrived from Kane County, Tracy Wienrich of La Fox directed volunteers to move a canopy out of the way.
"We want to get the sand as close as possible (to the pile of filled sandbags) so when we fill them we don't have to carry them halfway across the parking lot," he said, as wind whipped the workers.
"It's labor-intensive, bending your back and you get wet. It's not very fun after two and a half hours," said 11-year-old Scout Josh Helsper of Lily Lake.
The sandbags, located in the parking lot, will be available through Monday. Sandbags also are available at the Kane County Sheriff's Department east parking lot at 37W355 Route 38, St. Charles; Sugar Grove Fire Station 1's north parking lot, 25 Municipal Drive, Sugar Grove; and the Dundee Township Highway Department, Route 72 and Sleepy Hollow Road, Dundee Township.
Andersen said Campton Hills residents should expect flooding, even in areas that haven't before, because the frozen ground isn't absorbing all the melted snow, and some stormwater drains are clogged with debris and ice. The sandbags can be used to build a dam prevent that water from flowing overland into a house.
Even though visibility was near nil on many roads, police and fire officials from Elburn, Sugar Grove, Batavia, St. Charles and Geneva reported no accidents caused by it.
Authorities in northern Kane County and McHenry County reported a handful of road closures and several cars slipping off the road, but few flooded homes or major accidents.
Among the roads closed or rendered impassable Saturday were Route 25 north of Dunham Road near South Elgin and McCornack Road between Route 72 and Big Timber Road in Gilberts.
Kane County opened its emergency operations center to monitor the Fox River and to distribute sand.
And at Ace Hardware in Batavia, "We are going through (ice-melting) salt and quite a bit of sump pumps," said store supervisor Brett Baish. The few sump pump customers he had talked to told him their previous pumps had failed.
The fog is known as "advection fog," caused when a warm air mass passes over snow or ice. A fog advisory is in effect until 4 p.m. Saturday, when cooler weather is expected to move in and dissipate it, according to the National Weather Service. It had already started fading by 1 p.m. in the Tri-Cities.
According to the National Weather Service, the ice melt of Friday and Saturday was the equivalent of receiving up to 2 inches of rain. It expects up to 1 inch of rain to fall through this evening, and warns that ice jams make occur as rivers thaw and ice is dislodged, which could lead to flooding.
The Chicago area also is under flash flood and tornado watches.
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