Monday morning, as the fifth largest blizzard to ever hit Chicago moves east, Chicago-area residents woke to more than 19 inches of snow on the ground and a morning commute that was difficult at best.
At about 7:30 a.m., weather service officials said lake-effect snow was tapering off, ending a storm that started Saturday evening and produced nearly non-stop snowfall. Coupled with drifting snow and wind gusts of up to 45 mph, the storm made for a rough morning commute, though Metra and the CTA had vowed they would be largely on schedule.
Metra's vow was tested early, and some morning delays ended up stretching past 30 minutes. Many of the agency's 11 lines experienced delays of some sort.
Traffic on the transit agency's busiest line, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, was being fouled early Monday by an inbound train stopped with mechanical problems near west suburban Hinsdale. At least four other trains are stopped behind it at one point, the agency said. In addition, the agency said one outbound BNSF train would not go beyond Lisle because of weather conditions and another was canceled. The agency said delays could reach 50 minutes.
The Union Pacific North Line also experienced trouble, with at least four trains, two outbound and two inbound, canceled due to "manpower and weather issues."
Inbound trains on the Union Pacific Northwest Line ran up to 35 minutes behind schedule due to weather-related switch problems, the agency said, and trains on the Union Pacific West Line were up to 30 minutes late because of manpower problems.
On the Milwaukee District North and West lines, delays were 15 to 20 minutes, and both the SouthWest Service and Metra Electric District Line had delays of up to 20 minutes.
The CTA reported significant delays on its Yellow Line early Monday. Trains were stopped at the Dempster-Skokie station due to a stalled train but service had resumed by 6:35 a.m., according to a service alert. All trains were running normally as of about 7:30 a.m., according to the agency website.
No major accidents or disruptions were being reported on major roadways early Monday, according to Illinois State Police. Spinouts and minor accidents happened throughout Sunday night, but roads were clear as of about 9 a.m., state police said. The worst conditions are on I-80 and I-57, officials said.
ComEd said that about 2,400 customers remain without power this morning; that number peaked at about 51,000 at its park, according to a ComEd spokeswoman. Most of those affected are in the southern part of the region, the spokeswoman said, and though specific numbers as to what caused the bulk of the outages are not available, the spokeswoman said a "pretty rough combination" of high winds and heavy snow played a role.
Iin McHenry County, most school districts are closed today, but the courthouse will open on schedule and traffic is moving, said David Christensen, director at the McHenry County Emergency Management Agency. Christensen had no problem driving to work from Lake County, he said.
"The road crews did a heck of a job," he said. "They are all passable. Of the five cars I did see in the ditch, all of them were SUVs. Humor aside, it looks like we came through pretty good."
The McHenry Public Library will open at 1 p.m., instead of the usual 9 a.m. That kind of delayed opening is common across the region, perhaps for the same kind of reason it happened with the Vernon Hills Park District fitness centers: Staff needs time to clear the snow from parking lots and walkways.
Chicago Public Schools announced its third weather-related closing this year. The district with nearly 400,000 students also closed two days last month due to cold weather.
Also closing Monday are several suburban school districts, including School District U-46 in the northwest suburbs and Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202. DePaul University also canceled all classes Monday. A full list of school closures can be found here.
At its heaviest Sunday afternoon, the storm, which began Saturday night, brought an inch of snow per hour.
As of about 7 a.m. Monday, O'Hare International Airport had a total of 19.3 inches of snow, making it the fifth largest multiday storm on record, according to the National Weather Service. Midway International Airport recorded 18.4 inches at midnight Monday, and Rockford saw 11.9 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
Weather service meteorologist Andrew Krein said Monday morning's lake-effect snow should not add more than an inch or so to those totals before moving eastward away from the region towards northwest Indiana.
The storm was officially dubbed a blizzard Sunday morning, a classification defined as a storm that has sustained winds of 35 miles per hour or more and at least three hours where there is less than a quarter mile of visibility due to snow. This weekend's storm had several hours where the criteria was met, according to the weather service.
By 5 a.m. Monday, the blizzard warning and weather storm warning had expired, Krein said.
But the storm was still wreaking havoc on air travel. As of about 9 a.m., nearly 800 Monday flights at O'Hare had been canceled and about 175 more had been delayed, according to FlightStats, which tracks airline and airport performance. Midway reported about 100 canceled flights and 40 delayed flights. More than 1,400 flights had been canceled Sunday at O'Hare, and another 319 flights were canceled at Midway.
The Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation continued to deploy a full fleet of 350 snowplows Monday morning. The plows had been busy battling the storm for more than 30 hours by Monday, according to a department statement.
Plows were continuing to focus on the city's arterial streets early Monday, but began to transition to neighborhood streets about 8:30 a.m. red. Along with the city's department of transportation and department of water management, streets and sanitation was "deploying more than 150 pieces of heavy equipment" to clear streets and remove snow piles built up from continuous plowing, according to the statement.
Sunday, which saw a total of 16.2 inches of snowfall, is officially the snowiest February day in the history of Chicago and the fourth snowiest calendar day ever, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Gino Izzi. The city has seen more snow so far in February than it typically records from February through April, Izzi said.
The blizzard swept through Chicago exactly four years after the Groundhog Day blizzard of 2011. That infamous storm, the third largest on record, dumped more than 21 inches of snow on the city. The largest single snowstorm was the Jan. 26-27 blizzard of 1967, when about 23 inches of snow fell.
If this weekend's snowfall totals rise by more than an inch, this year's storm moves into fourth place past the 20.3 inches that fell during the snowstorm on Jan. 12-14, 1979.
Lisa Black contributed.