Posted on 02/24/2019 3:05:29 PM PST by UB355
Strong gale-force winds and blizzard conditions shut down large stretches of heavily traveled highways across the state Sunday, including I-41 in Neenah, where one motorist was killed and several others injured in a chain-reaction pileup involving as many as 100 vehicles.
Neenah Wisconsin is @ 30 Southeast of Green Bay, WI
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
whoops should read southwest of Green Bay
I’ve been watching the wind (snow) blow all day. It’s been HORIZONTAL since 6am this morning. Gusts to 50 MPH. Supposedly calming down around 9pm. Barn Chores were just a BLAST today, LOL!
We had a few accidents and slide-offs outside of my little Cow Town today and a 20-car pile up on I-90 north of De Forest.
So happy we didn’t have to BE anywhere, today. Yeesh, Mother Nature! Get back on your meds!
I remember going out into a field in "whiteout" condition in Wisconsin.
After about 50 yards, nothing by white in any direction.
No worries, it was fun, the field was fenced, you could not get lost.
My 101 year old friend in Australia, Roy Eykamp, wrote about being in a whiteout on a lake in South Dakota.
It was much more dangerous, as there was open water and thin ice.
He found his way by wind direction and the sound of ducks in the open water.
No snow today, for a change! It was just what’s already here blowing past me...and through me!
At my other farm, we had a winter (2012?) that had 100 inches of snow - our usual is 50”. I did a ‘Pa Ingalls’ and tied a rope from the house to the chicken coop so I could find my way down there and back! ;)
I-35 closed both directions in Iowa due to blizzard.
Don’t know how drivers are in other states, but many in Wisconsin seem to believe because they drive a 4-wheel drive $50,000 SUV or $70,000 pickup that ice and wind are not a prob;em, therefore when on the freeway - like 41/45 or 43 and the rest - that the 70 mph is for cars in the slow right lane, except when no cars are present then it too becomes the fast lane - saw where one officer handed out 7 tickets in a row for speeds over 105.
Watching the traffic ahead is like watching a snake move there is so much weaving - not to mention their needless application of brakes which cause a chain reaction and traffic slows for miles.
As far as pile ups, the Wisconsin procedure is to treat them like slow moving cars (at or sightly above the speed limit) and weave in and out until they get the checkered flag ... or something else gets in the way.
Malls are also a good place to see how fast their cars can go.
Turn signals and headlights in snow, heavy fog, and dense rain are optional because they are believed prone to wear out with repeated use ... very frugal these WisCONsinites
I-80 in Iowa is a bear in these. I remember driving up to rescue my stranded 20 year old son off of I-80 at Newton (he got a motel) one time and leaving Kansas City at 2:45 in the morning. 35 and 80 were littered with wrecks, medians full of overturned and spun out trucks etc.
I think it was 95 and there were nine dead.
I did that too. Interesting experience that I've never forgot.
Scariest conditions for me was one time I drove out to western Minnesota on a Friday afternoon. Whiteout conditions were so bad that I couldn't see anything. Thought I might be headed into a ditch, but didn't know whether I was going into the ditch on the left side or the right side of the road. Then for awhile there was a semi tailgating me to add to the stress. When we got in the wind shadow by a farm I was able to get him past me. When we got to the next town, I saw the semi pulled in by a bar. So of course, not long after we got out of the town, the semi was right on my tail again.
Got to where I was headed, and the next day the REAL storm hit. Whiteout was so bad that at times you couldn't see things ten feet out from the house window. Sunday the storm had died down a lot, so figured I'd head back to the Twin Cities. Popped the hood on the car, and you couldn't see the engine. The snow was packed in the engine area so solid it was like looking at a snowbank.
One time when I was young, our minister decided to drive out into the country to see what conditions were like in a storm. He got stuck in a drift on the road. He hiked a couple of miles and got a place to spend the night. The next day we went out to free his car. The only way we found it was that his radio antenna was sticking up out of the snow. Fortunately, we were working on digging him out when the snowplow arrived. If we hadn't been there, the snowplow driver would have had quite a surprise.
The combination rain snow hitting pine trees and then freezing has caused branches to fill up and be weighted down and break off or be blown down when hit by those high winds.
No way to get off on a ramp. Could not generally see them, and extremely slippery as well, with the snow freezing on the road. Very few off ramps in that area,and a long way in between. I could only tell where the lanes were by the rumble strips on the inside of the median and shoulder. I found both sides that way without attempting to do so.
You did not want to pull off on the shoulder, too much chance of being rear-ended.
Finally had a semi pass me going a little faster, so I hung back a bit and followed his tail lights. We seldom exceeded 30 mph.
I received a call on my cell phone, asking if I was going to use the room in Van Horn, as it was 11 p.m. and the town was filling up because of the storm. I said I was 30 miles out and would be there in about an hour.
A few minutes after I arrived in Van Horn, the authorities shut down I-10.
Power was out when I got to the motel. The manager asked if I still wanted the room.
I said, no problem, I have a headlight and a sleeping bag.
Two hours later, the power came back on.
Right in front of Camp Scholer, from the looks of it?
What does a Wisconsin ‘chicken coop’ look like? I know what one looks like
in the south close to the Gulf of Mexico. But I’d think they have to be better
protected in the northern climates.
My dad’s best friend had a son who headed out in such a blizzard to see his girlfriend. He never made it. They found him frozen, snagged on a barbed wire fence. Nothing to be trifled with.
My dad’s best friend had a son who headed out in such a blizzard to see his girlfriend. He never made it. They found him frozen, snagged on a barbed wire fence. Nothing to be trifled with.
I was almost killed in that field a couple of years earlier. But that involved a horse, and is another tale.
There is a fundamental design flaw in the interstates that leads to pileups.
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