Name: 10 years ago, it was ‘Snowmageddon’: ‘Do you understand what’s going on on Lake Shore Drive right now?’
Brand: chicagotribune.com
SKU: chicagotribune-com-316
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

10 years ago, it was ‘Snowmageddon’: ‘Do you understand what’s going on on Lake Shore Drive right now?’

preview

AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneJan 29, 2021 at 5:00 amTen years ago, a unique storm of extremes tested every crack in Chicago’s infrastructure, halted most forms of transportation and humbled a city that prides itself on powering through any kind of weather.This wasn’t . Generations of kids were brought up on stories of the towering mounds of snow in the 1967 blizzard, which inspired author George R.R. Martin’s iconic ice wall in “Game of Thrones” and the 1979 blizzard that swung a mayoral election, among others.But on Jan. 31, 2011, a rare meteorological mix of constant snowfall, freezing high winds and highly charged lightning brought on “Snowmageddon,” a blizzard that turned picturesque Lake Shore Drive into an arctic parking lot.The blizzard was the product of a narrow, far-reaching winter storm system dumping snow and ice from Oklahoma to Wisconsin, affecting 100 million people.The Groundhog Day Blizzard, as it was officially named, was immortalized with eerie overhead photographs of hundreds of abandoned vehicles, including mighty CTA articulated buses, helplessly stranded in snowdrifts mid-commute, no drivers in sight.The blizzard was thought to have led to at least a dozen deaths in traffic accidents, shoveling incidents and at least one man found in the waters of Diversey Harbor, possibly while trying to get a closer look of the storm.Firsthand exposure left lasting memories for many, like a young architect who recalled fleeing the relative safety of his stranded bus.“As soon as the doors opened, you could feel that gush coming off the lake. It was just brutal,” he said. “There was lightning going on and it was kind of like we were in a battle with nature.”The storm left about 84,000 city residents without power and led to a two-day closure of all Chicago Public Schools, both airports, and nearly all ground and rail traffic.City services struggled to keep up with the 40 hours of constant snowfall that began on a Monday evening, accompanied by powerful wind gusts that reached up to 70 mph. Chicago firefighters, some on snowmobiles, others on foot, spent hours doing car-by-car checks to escort stranded motorists to hospitals to wait out the storm.A report on city response said the 911 center received 24,584 calls between Feb. 1 and 2, and 350 calls from Lake Shore Drive.The resulting uproar from stranded motorists led the city to create an extreme weather action plan and construct breaks in Lake Shore Drive’s center median that would allow drivers to make emergency U-turns when the roadway ahead becomes impassible., residents talk about their experiences during the once-in-a-generation storm. Here are their stories.Chicago’s 10 largest snowfalls since 1886 — and how the Tribune covered themThe biggest? When 23 inches fell Jan. 26-27, 1967. Above are cars stranded on Cermak Road from that storm.Tom Skilling, a nationally recognized meteorologist with WGN-TV, recalled how forecasters knew well before the storm struck that it would be intense.“We had a read on this about a week ahead of time. We knew we had one heck of a system winding up,” he said of what turned out to be the third biggest snowfall in Chicago history, behind the 1967 and 1979 blizzards.“A blizzard watch had been issued two days ahead of time. I remember people would contact me on social media and say, ‘Ah, you weather people are blowing this all out of proportion, you’ve blown another one and all the rest,’ and I’m thinking, my God, they’re kicking the body before it’s dead,” Skilling said.The advisory went out so early that it appeared to people that the storm wasn’t developing:“Chicago kinda looks wimpy with all this fretting about the blizzard. It’s 2 feet of snow, not a class 3 kill-storm or anything,” one Chicago commenter posted on Twitter at 5:05 p.m.“Monday evening. No snow yet. Weather people are forecasting the Apocalypse. Stay tuned,” another commenter posted at 5:30 p.m.An Aurora native who witnessed the 1967 blizzard and began his career at age 14, Skilling understands why so many people were stranded on Lake Shore Drive.“People went to work. There was no storm occurring. They thought they had time to get home, and it turns out things went downhill so fast that they found themselves in a terrible situation where they were trapped.“My heart goes out to them. I don’t think they were being daredevils or ignoring the advice that was coming in. I just think that they didn’t realize how fast this was coming in.”The National Weather Service called the blizzard one of the most powerful winter storms in history.It also featured some unusual characteristics, including thundersnow, a weather occurrence that only happens in .07% of snowstorms.Thunder and lightning require warmer temperatures at the ground level and cooler temperatures high above, something less likely to occur during a blizzard.“Here are some important bench marks that were set during the Groundhog Day Blizzard,” Skilling said. “One, it snowed for 40 hours. And in that 40 hours, 11 hours of them had visibilities under a quarter-mile. Snow was falling at the rate of 2 inches per hour. We wound up with 21.2 inches. It was the third biggest snow to occur.“It was the windiest storm,” Skilling said. “It was noteworthy in its lightning production. ... Lightning discharges during a thunderstorm are formidable ... positively charged lightning is higher amperage, therefore it’s more apt to be deadly or injurious if people are struck by it. Nobody wants to be struck by it.”Skilling, who worked his longest stretch on live television during the snowstorm, said climate change is affecting weather patterns. “We’re on a planet that’s warming, there’s no question about that.“What people don’t realize is, because the planet is warming overall doesn’t mean you can’t get cold waves. It doesn’t mean you can’t get snowstorms,” he said. “In fact, on a warming planet, the snowstorms you get may be heavier snow producers because the environment within which the storm is occurring has warmed and therefore holds more water vapor. So the snows can actually be heavier in a warming climate regime. It’s just that they occur less frequently and over less area.”Architect Cole Jarvis, 35, is now a married father of two living in Bourbonnais. But he’ll never forget the day he and a co-worker were stranded aboard a CTA bus stuck on North Lake Shore Drive for several hours after heavy snow halted all traffic late in the evening rush.“I was working down at a firm in the Wrigley Building on Michigan. (A co-worker and I) were told that there was going to be some snow coming. However, we decided to keep working throughout the day.“Around 3 or 3:30, my boss said, ‘You guys do really need to get out of here now.’ I didn’t live up in the city at the time,” Jarvis said. “A friend of mine said, ‘Hey, it’s going to get pretty bad. Why don’t you come up and crash at my place tonight?”The pair boarded the No. 146 bus headed for Belmont Avenue, near his co-worker’s apartment.According to a city report, between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. the northbound drive kept moving as the snow increased and visibility decreased. As drifts began to blow onto the roadway, spinouts, jackknifed buses and stalled vehicles pushed traffic back to North Avenue and LaSalle Street.At two minutes to 8 p.m., the executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communication ordered the drive closed, but anybody north of Fullerton Avenue was already hopelessly stuck.“We made it probably to about Fullerton when we actually saw the cars coming down the (exit) ramps,” Jarvis said. “And that took a few hours to get to that point.“After that, we were barely moving. We were looking outside and all you could see were the cars just piling up with snow.”After sitting on the bus for four to five hours, Jarvis, the co-worker and several other passengers decided to leave, a move he said he somewhat regrets.“A few of us decided to get off, which was not the right thing to do, but being a little younger I decided, ‘Hey, let’s just do it. Get off this bus and make a run for it.’“So when the doors opened, and as soon as the doors opened, you could feel that gush coming off the lake. ... The force of the wind. The ice and snow. The noise of it, too, was so loud.”They struggled through the snow before crossing into the southbound lanes and huddled together until a truck driver who was working offered them a ride.After they were dropped off at Belmont, Jarvis said he was astounded by the silence a few blocks in from lake compared with the loudness of the storm where they had been stranded.“We saw another person walking their dog, and we were like, ‘Do you understand what’s going on, on Lake Shore Drive right now?’”Sarah Finkel Schochet and Shmulie Schochet say friends and family still talk about their dramatic Feb. 2 wedding under the stars just after the snowfall ended.“I had been living in New York, and I went home for the wedding for about three weeks,” Sarah Schochet said. “During that time, my mother was taking care of a lot of the wedding preparation, so I was just preparing for the wedding. I wasn’t so involved in the weather and what was happening. I mean, I guess I wasn’t so concerned, because I was there — I didn’t have to fly in or anything.”“I think it was a week prior that my parents ... and family and friends were pushing that I come in a few days sooner, not to risk it, not to risk missing my flight and missing my wedding,” Shmulie Schochet said.“There were a lot of things being arranged and flown in, including most of the people who were coming from my side of the family, who were flying in,” he said. “There was a lot of anxiety and fears around the storm because it would affect our night and impact it in a very traumatic way.”Many guests, including the groom’s sister, didn’t make it.A blizzard that dumps nearly 22 inches of snow isn’t ideal for an Orthodox Jewish wedding, particularly as Jewish tradition calls for the couple to be married outside under a chuppah, a wedding canopy that symbolizes the home the newlyweds will build together.Luckily, hotel staff were able to clear enough snow to set up the chuppah. But for guests, the day’s subfreezing temperatures didn’t make the outdoor ceremony too inviting.So family and friends watched from behind wall-length windows within the hotel’s heated banquet hall. A male relative balanced a laptop on his head so that the groom’s sister could watch the ceremony through a webcam.Sarah Schochet said she started to relax when the ceremony began and she caught a glimpse of relatives crowded by the windows to see her.“Looking back at pictures, at some of the ones that strike me are my sister and cousin pressed against the glass looking out. Not exactly what we imagined, but it was beautiful,” she said. “I had a sense of calm standing there. It’s going on. We’re still getting married, despite all these other hiccups. We’re still strong. I remember feeling serene and that everything was good.”With a Chicago Tribune photographer snapping photos, the couple’s postblizzard Orthodox nuptials took place under the traditional covering at the O’Hare Westin on the scheduled date despite the historic snowfall.Shmulie Schochet, a property manager, and Sarah Schochet, a stay-at-home mom, have three children and are now living in Long Island, New York.“It’s a huge deal, and any relatives that made it to the wedding, whenever we see them, there’s just this ‘I will never forget your wedding!’ There’s no forgetting our anniversary ever because all of the people around us will remind us of it,” Sarah Schochet said.“Just this year, my mother called me during the day and told me that there’s a blizzard in Toronto,” Shmulie Schochet said. “She’s looking outside, and it’s reminding her of our wedding.”City officials said it took about 33 hours for crews to remove snow from Lake Shore Drive and reopen it to the public.Some motorists complained about difficulties finding their vehicles, which were scattered among various tow yards. But of the 900-plus autos abandoned on the drive, 496 cars were returned to their owners within 48 hours.The cold weather caused mechanical problems and delays on some CTA train lines. Several Amtrak trains scheduled to depart from Union Station were canceled.One of agencies that had the worst showing was Metra, the commuter line of choice for thousands of suburban residents who work in the city.Metra waited too long on Feb. 2 to decide to switch from normal weekday service to reduced service — using its Sunday schedule — and didn’t get word out to riders soon enough.Although some staff worked 40 to 60 hours straight through the blizzard, Metra and its contract railroads, the Union Pacific and the BNSF, were unable to get enough crews to job sites to run trains, and clear tracks and equipment.Metra tried to prepare for the storm by putting up crews at motels near the job sites. But with the exception of one site in Aurora, the crews were unable to travel even a mile in outlying areas because roads in McHenry, Lake, Will and Kane counties were closed.Crews that were on duty were unable to keep up with blowing snow that covered up key rail junctions and at yards where equipment is stored and maintained, the then-agency deputy director said, calling it “the worst day” in his 30-year railroad career.Four months after the blizzard, city officials released a 13-page report that recommended tighter coordination between city agencies as well as the creation of an operational plan that clearly identifies triggers for a systematic shutdown.Still, city officials said they were proud of the response from city workers facing a rare weather occurrence. “While the extreme weather conditions did strain City resources, close coordination and communication between departments, the county, the state and partner organizations proved successful overall,” the report stated.In a statement Thursday, the city’s OEMC also credited the blizzard with the creation of an annual winter weather workshop where city agencies plan how to coordinate their efforts with a centralized command center during bad weather. The city “learned the importance of having a staffing plan and shift schedule to ensure key personnel are on post at all times,” an OEMC spokeswoman said.This week’s snowstorm was the biggest in the past two years, but it didn’t present problems other than slick roads and lots of shoveling. Another storm is expected this weekend with 4 to 8 inches of snowfall predicted, according to the National Weather Service.In the meantime, Chicago residents can’t help but wonder when the next major blizzard will strike.According to Skilling, these kind of storms may happen once a decade.“We’re kind of overdue, but do I see the storm just yet? Not yet. But we don’t always have a week’s notice on these things, so we’ll keep watching very, very carefully.” Advertisement

AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneJan 29, 2021 at 5:00 amTen years ago, a unique storm of extremes tested every crack in Chicago’s infrastructure, halted most forms of transportation and humbled a city that prides itself on powering through any kind of weather.This wasn’t . Generations of kids were brought up on stories of the towering mounds of snow in the 1967 blizzard, which inspired author George R.R. Martin’s iconic ice wall in “Game of Thrones” and the 1979 blizzard that swung a mayoral election, among others.But on Jan. 31, 2011, a rare meteorological mix of constant snowfall, freezing...

public

William Lee

The Chicago Tribune is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the 6th highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017.

10 years ago, it was ‘Snowmageddon’: ‘Do you understand what’s going on on Lake Shore Drive right now?’

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS