Snow in northwest Indiana traps drivers
Lake-effect snow in northwest Indiana stranded drivers along the U.S. Highway 30 Monday, some for as long as 12 hours, as the upper Midwest dealt with a separate weekend storm that canceled flights, closed highways, and collapsed the roof of the Minneapolis Metrodome.
Indiana authorities were having a hard time reaching motorists as snow plows struggled with the high drifts and roadways that were clogged with nearly 100 abandoned cars and some jackknifed semitrailers. But the wind was causing the greatest trouble.
“As soon as the plows go through an area, the wind is blowing fresh snow right back into the roads,” state highway department spokesman Jim Pinkerton said.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for parts of northern Indiana, where heavy lake effect snow was expected to drop an additional 5 to 10 inches Monday. Overnight temperatures had dipped into the low 20s with wind chills around 5.
The powerful weekend storm was headed northeast toward Canada, according to the National Weather Service, with some snow possible Monday in Michigan and through parts of Pennsylvania and New York. Nearly 2 feet of snow fell in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin during the weekend.
In Minneapolis, heavy snow caused the inflatable roof of the Metrodome to collapse Sunday. Video inside the stadium aired by Fox Sports showed the inflatable Teflon roof sagging before it tore open, dumping massive amounts of snow across one end of the playing field.
No one was hurt, but the Vikings’ game Sunday against the New York Giants had to be moved to Detroit’s Ford Field tonight.
In the Chicago area, only a few inches of snow fell, but wind gusts of up to nearly 50 mph blew the roof off a building at Navy Pier and canceled at least 1,375 flights at O’Hare International Airport and more than 300 at Midway International Airport. The cancellations left some travelers stranded overnight at O’Hare, where officials set up about 200 cots.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

















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back to top4 Comments to “Snow in northwest Indiana traps drivers”
This makes me think of when I was living in Chicago and many of my co-workers lived in Northwest Indiana and commuted in to work. (Housing was cheaper, schools better, so families that wanted the mother to stay home with the kids sometimes chose to have the father do the sacrifice of a long commute.) Northwest Indiana even advertised itself as a “suburb” of Chicago and a good place to live.
Well, a day or two after the second biggest snowfall in Chicago history, the radio played a commercial for Northwest Indiana. When it finished, the announcer said, “Speaking of Northwest Indiana . . .” and launched into a news report of how many cars were still stranded on highways there after running out of gas (idling for hours) and the like. It sounded like a real disaster zone.
Somehow I think Northwest Indiana probably got their money back on that running of their ad.
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I live in Northeast IN, where we got a nice 6 or so inches and some excellent drifting. And we had a two-hour delay just for icing on the cake. A great way to start the week before Christmas break, if you’re a schoolteacher.
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I guess you can have too much of a white Christmas. Stay warm Sylvie.
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Wow too bad Michael Brown isnt the head of the FEMA anymore.
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