Cold sweeping south, northern Great Lakes hit by early heavy snow

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Drivers faced a second day of unseasonably heavy snow and some businesses and schools shut down in the northern Great Lakes region on Tuesday, while a cold front was expected to push cold air south as far as Texas on Wednesday. "Temperatures will be 20 to 40 degrees below average from just east of the Rockies to the Plains," the National Weather Service said on its website. The cold was expected to extend as far as Texas on Wednesday, with freeze warnings issued for about two dozen counties including Dallas. Though the day began mildly in some parts of the Midwest, temperatures dropped quickly. Chicago's O'Hare International Airport weather monitoring station temperatures plunged to 40 degrees Fahrenheit at 9 a.m., down from 58 degrees at around midnight. Farther north, more than a foot of snow fell on some areas of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. "We are dealing with a major snow storm up here but being in the north woods we seem to tackle those things fairly easily even if they come early," said Captain Dave Gardner of the Vilas County Sheriff's Office in Eagle River, Wisconsin, a popular snowmobiling destination near the Ottawa National Forest. "We recommend people stay off the roads, our county crews are out." Local media reported that schools closed in some towns - where they were not already closing for the Veterans Day holiday - and Veterans Day ceremonies were postponed for a day in northern areas of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. State troopers in Minnesota said they handled more than 105 crashes, one of them with two fatalities, between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. The Minneapolis bus system, Metro Transit, said about half of its buses were running behind due to wintry road conditions early in the morning. Northern Michigan University in Marquette, on Michigan's upper peninsula, took the rare measure of shutting down for snow after quarter-sized sleet balls hammered the area. "They are used to this sort of stuff but it was unusual to have this amount of snow this early," said NMU English professor Cheryl Reed, who is spending her first winter in northern Michigan. "I have a cottage right on Lake Superior and there are huge waves on the lake," she said. "My cottage is mostly heated by wood. I stocked up on wood and wine so I'm set." (Reporting by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Bill Trott)