Midwest Goes From Mild to Wild With Snowstorm

CHICAGO — A blustery snowstorm brought an abrupt halt to El Nino’s mild winter weather in the Midwest on Monday, tying up highways and airports, including Chicago’s busy O’Hare, and knocking out electricity to more than 400,000 customers.

About a foot of snow fell in Wisconsin, with 11 inches in Illinois and 10 in northwestern Indiana. The 15 inches that fell over the weekend in central Iowa were heaped into 12-foot snowdrifts in Des Moines by wind gusting to 40 mph.

“Roads are drifting shut almost as soon as they are being plowed out,” Sheriff’s Deputy Mary Paisley said in Wisconsin’s Lafayette County.

Five traffic deaths in Missouri, two in Kansas and one in Wisconsin were blamed on the weather.

The storm and the cold air it dragged down from Canada brought a sharp halt to what had been weeks of unusually mild weather. El Nino has been causing a kink in the jet stream that has kept the coldest air off the northern United States and steered much of the heaviest precipitation across the South.

By Monday, wind chills had dropped below zero in Iowa, and Minot, N.D., had a low of 20 below, with a wind chill of minus 48.

“It is kind of a shock to us because we just haven’t had winter,” said 76-year-old Phyllis Cushman of Platteville, Wis.

Ben Fortune, manager of Nevada Bob’s Golf in Windsor Heights, Iowa, said: “It’s weird because we’ve all played at least one round of golf this year in February, and then March comes along and kicks us in the butt.”

Blizzard conditions at O’Hare reduced arrivals and departures to just 20% of normal, backing up flights elsewhere around the country.

Indiana shut down southbound Interstate 65 because of drifting snow and numerous jackknifed tractor-trailers. “It’s just impassable, we can’t even get the tow trucks out there,” said Trooper Ann Wojas.

Snow had stopped falling over the Plains, and Nebraska highway crews began reopening sections of Interstate 80, which had been shut down since Friday night for about 275 miles.

About 275,000 homes and businesses were without power across scattered sections of northern Illinois, including parts of Chicago. An additional 30,000 customers lost power in southeastern Wisconsin. And 135,000 were blacked out in northern Indiana.

The foul weather was the coldest part of a vast storm system that also poured heavy rain across the lower Great Lakes, the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic states Monday. Tornadoes damaged retirement communities, mobile home parks and campgrounds in Florida, and Alabama had flooding.