Chicagoans try to duck blizzard

A city that prides itself on withstanding every blow from Mother Nature tried to duck Tuesday as a colossal blizzard walloped it and the rest of the Midwest, prompting the first declared snow day at public schools in 12 years, the grounding of planes at both airports and a premature downtown rush hour.

Officials in Chicago said the potentially historic storm, which stretched more than 2,000 miles across a third of the country, threatened to dump up to 2 feet of snow overnight, generate winds of up to 60 mph and whip swells up to 25 feet on Lake Michigan.

The storm led Chicago officials to temporarily close the city's busy and iconic Lake Shore Drive so crews could plow snow Tuesday night, and they said they could have to close it again if waves threaten the roadway.

"This is nothing to play with here," said Edward Butler, a lakefront doorman peering through his building's glass doors at snow blowing horizontally and in small cyclones down the street. "This is gale force wind."

The wind gusts were strong enough to start the building's heavy revolving door spinning by itself.

Two streets near Chicago's Wrigley Field are closed to cars and pedestrians because of tiles falling from the top of the stadium's press box. Emergency Management spokesman Roderick Drew says high winds from the snowstorm battering the city Tuesday night sent the tiles flying.

He said Clark Street between Grace and Roscoe streets and Addison Street between Sheffield and Racine avenues were closed until further notice.

Drew said high winds were keeping maintenance crews from repairing the tiles. Crews from the city's building department were also on the site monitoring the situation.

Apparently spooked by talk of a "snowmageddon," rush hour started early in Chicago as fleeing commuters sought to beat the worst of the incoming snow.

At downtown commuter-train stations, people began pouring onto the platforms around 2 p.m. Tuesday, Metra trains filling to capacity within minutes and departing ahead of their scheduled times and leaving thousands behind on platforms.

Among those stuck at one station was Pete Donaghue, a 49-year-old commodity trader who decided to go to the gym before trying to get on what turned out to be a filled-to-capacity 2:35 p.m. train.

"Big mistake," he said, noting that if he had he gotten there sooner. "I'd be home right now, with my feet up, clicker in hand."

Metra was taking steps to avoid other potential delays on Wednesday.

Lone locomotives were scheduled to run back and forth all night on some lines to ensure snow couldn't accumulate, potentially clogging tracks and rendering vital track switches inoperable, said Judy Pardonnet, spokeswoman for the Metra commuter train company.

Officials pleaded with people to stay home and not drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary. Workers heading to their jobs in downtown Chicago said their bosses already had ordered them to leave early to make it home before the brunt of the storm, which was expected to hit overnight. Many said they expected their offices to be closed on Wednesday.

"Every Chicago resident should brace for a storm that will be remembered for a long time," said Jose Santiago, executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

Such ominous warnings were accompanied by other signals that the storm bearing down on the state was huge, and possibly historic. More than 1,300 flights at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport were canceled with no flights expected until Thursday. All flights in and out of Midway International Airport were stopped Tuesday and not expected to resume until Wednesday afternoon. And Gov. Pat Quinn activated more than 500 Illinois National Guard troops, who will be stationed at rest areas along highways.

"Everybody's taking this one seriously," said Dave Barber, the public works director in Peoria. He said all public employees except emergency personnel have been told to stay home Wednesday.

Schools up and down the state closed for Wednesday, including Chicago Public Schools, which canceled classes for the first time since 1999.

Road crews scurried to equip garbage trucks with snow plows to join an armada of snow-removal vehicles already salting the streets. In some places, snowmobiles were being delivered to firefighters to help them respond to emergencies, including 50 in Chicago.

Although much of Lake Michigan bordering the city was frozen Tuesday afternoon, officials feared the dangers of large waves combined with heavy winds.

"We're prepared as best we can for anything that can happen along Lake Shore Drive, which is a main artery for us," said Thomas Byrne, Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation. "We're in constant contact with police to get it shut down, if need be."

In Bloomington-Normal, State Farm Insurance shut down its headquarters and sent 15,000 employees home Tuesday afternoon. It was expected to remain closed on Wednesday.

At the Naval Station Great Lakes, workers were being advised that on Wednesday they may tell everyone but the most essential workers to stay home — something that hasn't happened in a dozen years, said base spokesman John Sheppard. At Scott Air Force Base, only a few essential personnel weren't sent home.

In Chicago, the closings included everything from Cook County health clinics, to the federal courthouse to the Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium. Water Tower Place and other shopping centers also closed.

"It's going to be a ghost town," said Martin Berg, a commuter from nearby Oak Park.

Also among the storm casualties was early voting in Chicago's mayoral race, the city's board of election announcing that voting sites would be closed on Wednesday because of the storm. Early voting had begun Monday in the first wide-open election in the city in more than two decades after Mayor Richard Daley announced he wouldn't seek a seventh term.

Politics and snow have a long intertwined history in Chicago.

Mayor Michael Bilandic famously lost the 1979 Democratic primary to rival Jane Byrne after his administration failed to adequately clear streets fast enough after a storm. One of the reasons voters have embraced Daley is for such things as the crews at Streets and Sanitation keeping the city in business every winter.

In the face of winter storms that would surely shut down other cities, Chicago has always exuded enormous confidence, shrugging off talk of a foot or more of snow. In a crunch, its snow-clearing legions include more than more than 500 plows and 1,000 workers — hardened by years of work in tough Midwestern winters.

But that cocksureness has diminished somewhat in the face of this week's storm, authorities even relying on methods of fighting snow more common in cities like New York — such as snow-melting machines. Daley told reporters Tuesday the city will use the snow melters — essentially jet engines — at places where snow is piling up too much to have it all trucked out of the city.

Meanwhile, some of the state's major colleges, including Eastern Illinois University and Bradley University told students there would be no classes Wednesday. Northwestern University told its students that evening classes were canceled Tuesday night and possibly on Wednesday. The University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign canceled classes that begin after 5 pm on Tuesday.

The seriousness of what the state was facing was underscored in advisories from the National Weather Service, which seemed to eschew its typically bland language with a warning of "blizzard conditions" that will make traveling "treacherous" as "winds increase, resulting in white out conditions."

And while the weather service warned that snow was expected to fall — 1-3 inches an hour in many areas — it also said that in some spots there could be "snow-producing thunderstorms" that could drive the snowfall rate up to 4 inches per hour. And that, the weather service said, makes "travel nearly impossible."

Linda Brown, 52, braved the drive into Chicago against the exodus from suburban Lombard Tuesday afternoon before the storm was expected to hit so she could stock up on pneumonia medication. Brown has been ill for weeks and was worried she wouldn't be able to venture out in the coming days.

"I don't need to be in this weather at all," she said as light snow fell near John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital. "We're trying to get ahead of the storm."