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What will you do differently for today's snow storm commute?
Yikes, two December rush hour snow storms in one week! Since I'm on daycare pickup today, I think I'll leave the office after lunch so I can get home for dinner.
In all honesty, this one looks like we'll get the brunt of it AFTER rush hour, but I'm still a bit shaken from Tuesday. While my commute wasn't bad, it took my wife 1.5 hours to get from the Loop to Lakeview in our car.
Luckily I take Metra, which is usually pretty reliable in these situations. The only bit of difficulty is getting from my office in river north to union station. I typically take a shuttle, but during snowstorms I can typically walk faster than traffic, so I may wind up doing that.
I will still take the Red Line as usual up to Bryn Mawr but what worries me is I have to go to Midway Saturday morning to fly to Nashville to see family for Christmas. It said they only plan on getting a few inches on the South Side so hopefully the snow we already got and the planned snow will not cause too much of a hassle. I don't mind waiting in an airport though... gives me time to read the paper, a book, play on the laptop or some weird little game I download on my phone... I don't want to wait for 6 hours either. Midway has always been a great choice for me, even in winter. Hopefully that will be the case this time.
That's a neat tool. Looks like right now its tracking for south Cook Co to get 10-11 inches, but of course the storm could veer north a little and we'd get sleet. Gee, I don't know which to hope for...just not ice, *please*.
Here is a general rule and I'm not the only one that is thinking this apparently as I have made a new discovery that many others are starting to realize that storms for whatever reason, head right for the Chicago area and then at the last second, either fizzle out to nothing or shoot right off to our north and bomb the northern suburbs.
Example: 12/16's storm was originally supposed to bomb the southern burbs with snow and I knew all along that the "Orland Park bubble" would protect us once again and sure enough it came through for us as always causing the storm to head right for the southern burbs and then at the last second, slide north and basically completely stop snowing from 159th Street south after about 630 PM, while it kept snowing north of 143rd Street for about another 4 hours.
This has to do with how storms fizzle out or dodge the southern burbs regularly. (Watch these, this is of a line of severe storms over the summer and this played out time and time again all summer long with the exception of the first week of August during one storm... YouTube - Orland Park Force Field & YouTube - Orland Park Force Field )
Anyways... 12/16; Downers Grove ended up with some 5-6 inches os snow once again as it did the first week of Dec... Oak Brook about 5", O'Hare 5", Midway even about 3", Orland and Tinley Park...1-2" and areas like Chicago Heights, Steger, Beecher, Hammond... pretty much nothing... Just a dusting. There is something about the southern burbs with how the forest preserves are so large right off to their north separating them (the southern burbs) from the rest of the city/metro area and having Joliet which is now a fairly large city sitting right off to their (Orland Park area) west that causes storms to avoid this area like the plague or hold temps just warm enough to cause what would be a snowstorm... a freezing rain or plain old rain storm.
I don't see this storm doing anything different. Areas from about Archer Ave and north and west look out, you will get a healthy dumping of snow and due to the upper level temperatures being higher than they are down on the ground, it will not be a nice fluffy snow as someone said, it will still be a wet heavy snow. Areas to the south-east of Archer Ave be prepared for a mix bag of slop, and areas south of Frankfort, Manhattan, and Beecher prepare for a ton of ice.
Last edited by NYrules; 12-18-2008 at 10:02 AM..
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What will you do differently for today's snow storm commute?
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