The 20.2 inches of snow that fell by midday in Chicago made the storm the city's third-largest on record, with still more coming down.
The storm was, if not unprecedented, extraordinarily rare, National Weather Service meteorologist Thomas Spriggs said.
"A storm that produces a swath of 20-inch snow is really something we'd see once every 50 years - maybe," Spriggs said.
Chicago closed its public schools for the first time in 12 years and shut down Lake Shore Drive, where hundreds of motorists were stranded for 12 hours after multiple car accidents on the iconic roadway.
On Wednesday morning, Lake Shore Drive looked like rush hour had been stopped in time. Three lanes of cars cluttered the road with snow reaching as high as the windshields. Some cars were almost completely buried. Others filled with snow that engulfed dashboards and steering wheels after doors were left ajar.
Bulldozers worked to clear the snow from around the cars before tow trucks plucked them out of snow drifts one by one. The operation likely would take hours: At least 1,500 cars awaited rescue.
No comments:
Post a Comment