Snow Slows, But Doesn’t Shut Down, Northwest Wisconsin

Northwestern, Wisc. —  The snow came, just not as much as we thought there would be…none-the-less…people stayed hunkered down in their homes. With schools closed, business and government offices shut down, there was not too much vehicular traffic in Superior and these was even less pedestrian traffic.

While the city didn’t have as many issues with the wind, it was a much different story in the rural areas to the east of Superior.   There, wind seemed to blow harder, and move much more snow from one side of the road to the other… leaving deep drifts.

For private snow plow drivers, what might have seemed like a great opportunity, had turned into a local version of the Groundhog Day movie.

“You’re out plowing today, what are you finding?
A lot of drifting and blowing. I mean I plowed some places this morning and already came back and there’s probably 6 or 7 inches blowing back on.
How do you keep up with that?
Just keep doing circles, just keep chasing it until it’s done basically,” said Derek Soyring.

Other plow drivers, like Shawn McGovern waited until afternoon before they started plowing, knowing their work would be for naught if they did their work earlier.
“So tell me about this morning, I understand you had a couple of driveways you did.
We did our own so far and our neighbors, it’s hard banks fluffy snow, pretty deep out in South Ranch.”

The amount of snow that fell in the area varied a great deal. Places along the south shore of Lake Superior had many more inches of snow, thanks to the lake effect. In fact Highway 2 just west of Ashland was forced to close for nine hours because of the blowing and drifting..

This time it appears the major impact of the snowstorm missed the northland and stayed south. The Twin Cities were walloped with between15 and 20 inches of snow by the time the storm moved out of the area.