February 6th snowstorm (Milwaukee, Madison, Kenosha: travel, work, house)

[ekg56]

Just wondering how everyone is fairing with today's predicted storm. We are being spared, it is sunny and 25 near Wausau. But I am watching WGN news out of Chicago and I can see how bad it is.
Be safe everyone!

[ScranBarre]

I'm watching Mike Seidel on the Weather Channel as I speak, and he's calling for 18 inches of snow in Milwaukee! WOW! I'm so envious! Here in Scranton, PA it's in the mid-50s with thunderstorms!

[sunflower53072]

We have some snow piling up here. It is really wet snow thou, so I don't think the total snow fall will be as great as if it was fluffier. The kids are off from school and they are happy.

[BacktoNE]

Appleton was supposed to, originally, get 3-6 inches. We barely got enough to call it a dusting.

[escapetacoma]

It's coming down at a good clip right now. Thankfully the wind has eased off but I'm still expecting some nasty drifts when I get out there to shovel it.

Definitely the heaviest snowfall we've had since we moved here. An hour and a half ago I took a short walk but you can't see any sign of my footprints now.

[Drover]

The city of Gurnee announced today that drivers are pretty much on their own because they're out of salt. The last bits of the salt stock are being used on hills only. I can't remember ever getting this many snowfalls in one season before. The total accumulation hasn't been unusually high, but we keep getting a couple inches here, 3 inches there, another inch a couple days later, 2 inches the next day...

[gallon]

Madison here, 4:00 in the afternoon. It's still coming down like a squall storm. White out conditions. Difficult driving. Significant drifting. People stuck and are run off the road everywhere. I have never seen people here have so much snow trouble. Special freak conditions are glazing the roadways. The plows cannot begin to keep up. They are saying total storm accumulation will be as much as 15 in. I am guessing at least a foot on the ground now.

Conditions are kind of perfect. Whatever salt might have been put down is having no effect. The temperature is just right so that traffic compresses and glazes the snow. It's like driving on a lake! Cars can't go, cars can't stop, and cars can't turn. Took a tour around town with my big Expedition, I didn't have too much trouble in AWD, except for the visibility. Had to drive slow of course. Was looking to help out where I could. But the amazing thing is that everybody seems to be helping each other out. People getting out of cars and taking turns pushing each other.

People seem to be coping well. The big thing is that people seem to be proceeding slowly. The road ice is still causing trouble though.

I have seen a freak, unpredicted storm like this in Washington DC. Traffic came to an absolute stop. The whole region was paralyzed. Took them days to sort it all out, plowing and towing. People had abandoned their cars right in the roadways.

[dreamhunter65]

We have sun and 27 here in Ladysmith feels good. Had about 6 inches Monday night.

[MidwesternBookWorm]

We're on the east side of Madison, and at 6:00, it's finally dwindling off some. Best guess is about 12-14" deep in most spots around our house, though there are 3' to 4' drifts running down the driveway and in front of the garage door. Spouse is out there now, wrassling the snowthrower (and thanking his lucky stars that it came back from the shop before today's snow hit...) Having just had a hernia repaired a couple of weeks ago, I'm temporarily exempt from assisting.

I went in to work early this morning, around 7:00 or so, and driving wasn't at all bad at that point. The roads were starting to get snow-covered, but it hadn't yet gotten to white-out conditions here in Madison at that point. A 10-mile drive across town that normally takes me 25 minutes took maybe 35 this morning.

The afternoon was another story entirely. My employer decided to close down at 3:00, and we all shut down computers and collectively girded our loins for what awaited us in the parking lot.

My car was surrounded by 2' snowdrifts. I had my boots on, but they don't go nearly that high up my calf, so I had cold and snowy feet by the time I clambered into the car. And then I had to get back out and walk around the car to knock the foot-long snow overhang off the southerly-facing passenger side; more snow in the boots.

I was seriously wondering whether I'd be able to get over the drifts around the car (took the snow shovel out of my trunk the last time we traveled and forgot to put it back - my bad). Fortunately, a saint of a snow-plow driver who was plowing the lot next door saw my plight, and cleared a swath in front of my vehicle.

Out on the road, travel was surprisingly good; lots of snow on the ground, of course, and I couldn't go much over 25 mph, but there was very light traffic for the first half of the trip. Saw at least a couple dozen vehicles off in ditches and stuck in snowy side streets and driveways, and lots of frustrated-looking folks digging 'em out. Wish I were in good enough shape physically to have helped.

It took about 25 minutes to get downtown from my office on the southwest side, and then things slowed to a crawl. Traffic was moving at 0 to 5 mph from Monona Terrace out East Wash to nearly Hwy 30.

Saw two city buses stuck; both had been trying to make left-hand turns and got stuck in the snow. One of them, on East Wash at First Street, had wound up at an angle and was blocking off both left-turn lanes and one lane of traffic, which was a large part of the reason for slow traffic on East Wash. Lots more private vehicles stuck or slid off along the way, though I was pleasantly surprised at how few idiots there were out there hot-dogging. Guess most of them were already stuck in ditches by that point.

Finally got to my side street a bit after 4:00, and skidded and slewed my way through the drifts to my driveway. We live on a tertiary street, and I don't expect to see a plow until tomorrow sometime, so it was a white-knuckle experience for the last few hundred feet. I don't think that a smaller vehicle would have made it (we have an Accord).

And when I finally made it to our house, I discovered that the daughter, who had the day off from school and work, had shoveled me out a little spot at the foot of the drive to park in! Good kid; guess we must have done something right.

Soup tonight, I'm thinking, and maybe a batch of homemade biscuits. And a pot of hot chocolate with a lashing of rum for the cold, weary snowshoveler when he comes inside at last.

[WIArcher]

I'm guessing we have about 18 inches or so in Kenosha. Although it's hard to tell with all the wind and drifts. My back patio door is covered to about my chest from the drifts. Just got in from clearing snow and it seems to be tapering off but the wind is still making a mess. To top it off school wasn't canceled in Kenosha! Can you believe that! When my son was coming out of school I couldn't tell which kid was which until he was about 25 feet away. Road are definitely nasty today and driving was under 20mph everywhere. Good thing for me that I drive a jeep because this is not weather for anything other then 4wd.