After blanket of snow, winter storm warning remains in place for Chicago area with frigid cold wave on its way

Gusty wind and sleet cut through the air Friday as 8-year-old Stella Dmytrenko-Hreczuch stood with her plastic snowboard next to a hill in Humboldt Park. Though as much as 8 inches of snow fell in some parts of the Chicago area, around her the grass was covered with only a light dusting of snow.

But Stella was not deterred. With a toothy grin, she carried her sled to the top of the hill, strapped in her feet and shuffled through the inch of snow before speeding down the slope.

“It kind of feels like you’re flying,” Stella said. “The snow’s really good today for throwing snowballs and making snowmen.”

Her parents, Martin Hreczuch and Julie Dmytrenko, watched nearby with smiles, bundled in layers. The family comes to the park almost every time it snows, they said.

“This is our go-to sledding hill,” Hreczuch said, laughing. “We’ll probably be back tomorrow.”

Regardless of how much fell, the wet snow that covered the Chicago area Friday was a welcome sight for some Chicagoans after a mostly snowless winter. It was the second winter weather system of the week to hit the region and the first significant snowstorm of the season after scientists predicted that Chicago’s winter would be milder and drier than normal due to a strong El Nino.

Anywhere from 2 to 6 additional inches were predicted Friday night through Saturday morning, said National Weather Service meteorologist Jake Petr. Areas closer to the lake will see lower totals, he added.

But the hazardous weather wreaked havoc for commuters and travelers, with disruptions to rail services and air travel Friday. And the weather was expected to get more severe with extreme wind chill temperatures set to follow the storm.

After back-to-back nights of heavy snow, the area will face a cold wave, with frigid temperatures to arrive Saturday afternoon after light snow showers die down. Wind chills as low as minus 30 to minus 15 degrees will hit Chicago through Tuesday night, the National Weather Service predicted.

“We’re certainly looking at, at the least for the year, one of the most significant snowstorms for the city,” Petr said.

A winter storm warning is in place for most of the area until noon Saturday.

On Friday, the “wind-whipped” snow blew across Chicago, leaving thousands without power and snarling road and air travel at the beginning of a long holiday weekend. Cook County and areas closer to the lakefront saw anywhere from 1 to 5 inches of snow, according to the weather service. Suburbs in the west, northwest and southwest received as much as 8 inches on the ground.

On various stretches of I-80 and I-90, visibility was less than a half-mile, the weather service said, creating “hazardous to downright dangerous” road conditions.

At a news conference inside the city’s emergency communications center, Mayor Brandon Johnson and other officials highlighted efforts to keep Chicagoans, particularly migrants and homeless people, warm.

The city had deployed 287 salt spreaders to clear snow and ice as city workers canvassed across the city to conduct well-being checks and connect homeless people to shelter over the next several days.

“I echo our city leadership today in saying that we are ready for the services and resources to keep residents and our new arrivals safe this winter,” Johnson said. “The full force of government is committed to the people of Chicago and new arrivals in this season.”

ComEd spokesperson Lauren Huffman said more than 80% of the total outages from the storm were restored as of 2:30 p.m. Friday, when about 28,000 customers were still without power. Over 150,000 customers lost power across the northern Illinois service region.

Airline passengers in Chicago were left scrambling with hundreds of flights canceled Friday at Chicago’s two airports, including more than 800 at O’Hare International Airport around 4 p.m., according to flight tracking service FlightAware. The Federal Aviation Administration had issued ground stops for O’Hare at times Friday because of the weather.

Hundreds of anxious travelers gathered at departure gates at O’Hare Friday awaiting updates for their flights, slumping in chairs beside piles of luggage or sitting on the floor as they scrolled through their phones.

Passengers could be seen glancing at the flight information board, which listed dozens of canceled flights in red letters. A line of at least a dozen people formed at one airline’s customer service desk.

“It’s just terrible,” said Sam Fujiwara, 42, whose Southwest flight to Denver had been canceled. He had traveled to Chicago for work and been scheduled on another flight Saturday night.

“This has been a terrible trip,” he said. “I knew the storm was coming, so this is where I’m at now.”

For lucky passengers without flight cancellations, driving to O’Hare on slick, icy roads proved the most challenging part of the morning.

“You could tell the plows had been out but the snow was coming down so quickly,” said Charlie Cates, who traveled on I-90 to reach the airport for his morning flight. “Once we parked and got in the airport, everything has been much easier.”

At Midway Airport, nearly 280 flights were canceled, most of them on Midway’s dominant carrier, Southwest.

Despite the winter storm warning, Chicago Public Schools classes remained in session Friday, although the district announced in the afternoon that all after-school and out-of-school activities, including athletic practices and games, would be canceled Friday and Saturday due to the increasing wind and snow. Only selective enrollment testing this Saturday at the Illinois Institute of Technology will proceed as planned, the district said.

As of Friday afternoon, 32 schools experienced an outage, although, using emergency power, classes continued as scheduled — with the exception of Rodolfo Lozano Bilingual & International Center Elementary School, which dismissed students and staff early due to safety concerns, a CPS spokesperson said. Service was fully restored to more than half of the impacted schools by 1 p.m., according to the district, which said disruptions in student busing were minimal. About 40 students, on 10 routes, were affected by conditions, CPS said.

With extreme cold predicted on Monday and Tuesday, CPS wrote, “We will contact all staff and families as early as possible this weekend with a final decision on if Martin Luther King Day events on Monday, Jan. 15 and classes on Tuesday, Jan. 16 will move forward.”

In a letter sent to staff and families Monday, CEO Pedro Martinez wrote, “We know that along with education, our students rely on their schools to provide meals, and a safe, warm environment. Therefore, CPS does everything possible to keep classes in session regardless of the weather.” Factors that shaped the district’s decision are the air temperature and wind chill; the amount of snow and ice on the ground; the accessibility of buildings and roads; potential issues with heating systems or power outages; and the ability to transport students safely on buses, CPS wrote in its announcement Friday.

During inclement weather, facilities staff work diligently to ensure that heating systems are functioning properly and that sidewalks and parking lots are cleared of ice and snow, the district said, adding that schools also limit the time students spend outdoors at recess.

In an emailed statement Friday, the Chicago Teachers Union also flagged the food and shelter needs of many district students, particularly the approximately 20,000 students experiencing homelessness, that may go unmet when school is closed.

But, the union added that the snowstorm showed the need for CPS to strengthen its partnership with CTU.

“Decades of divestment and privatization means Chicago Public Schools is not prepared for climate disaster. We see the impact of this not just during snowstorms, but in our schools’ aging facilities and outdated HVAC systems, many of which are twice as old as the national average,” the union wrote.

Meanwhile, DePaul University announced it had closed its campus buildings at 7 p.m. while the University of Illinois at Chicago encouraged professors to hold classes online.

Hardware and appliance stores in the area planned for an uptick in customers needing certain supplies ahead of the severe winter weather. Jeremy Melnick with JC Licht Ace Hardware, with 12 stores across the greater Chicago area, said anticipation of a storm can drive sales almost as much as the storm itself.

When news of this week’s weather started appearing everywhere, Melnick said customers were getting ready by stocking up on ice melt, snow shovels and snow-removal machines. Sales can increase by anywhere between 30% and 100% during a weather event depending on severity and how much notice the public has, Melnick said.

At a Home Depot in Logan Square, several shoppers stocked up on bags of rock salt and shovels. Bundled in layers, they hauled their purchased supplies through a slushy parking lot.

Ben Lee of Humboldt Park pushed two bags of salt in his cart. He wasn’t concerned about the snow, he said, just the single-digit temperatures expected to come after.

“Like, everything’s melting right now,” Lee said. “I just want to make sure it’s safe when it freezes if my wife goes outside.”

Inside the store, Sophie Rallo, 29, browsed through the space heater section. Her Wicker Park apartment doesn’t have a strong heating system, she said.

“Normally, I just wear layers and Uggs all the time,” she said with a laugh. “I’m worried about this weather, though. It’s hard to go outside as it is.”

Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs’ 2024 convention kicked off as scheduled Friday, but weather kept some attendees from being there live as even die-hard fans weighed the pros and cons of traveling in the storm.

Evan Altman, 44, blogs about the Cubs from his home in northwest Indiana and has attended every team convention that’s taken place since 2015. He decided not to attend the 2024 event Friday morning, partly due to prior experiences on winter roads between Indiana and Chicago.

“I didn’t really feel like turning what should be a three-hour drive into five at best, and possibly a lot longer,” he said.

The fact that the convention panels and ceremonies are broadcast online also helped him make the decision. “I can sit at home tonight with a beer and watch the opening ceremonies rather than white-knuckling my way through traffic.”

Podcaster and lifelong Cubs fan Mike Waller was supposed to meet his brother Steve, of Iowa, at the convention after surprising him with convention tickets for Christmas. The brothers grew up watching the team on WGN.

But Steve Waller, 46 made the call to cancel his trip Thursday because of concerns about the weather.

“All the things that could go wrong on the trip back, that’s why I ultimately decided to call it off,” he said.

Mike Waller, 49, who started a podcast about the team about a year and a half ago, barely made it into Chicago himself on his flight from North Carolina.

He flew into the city late Thursday and endured a four-hour delay due to mechanical issues with his plane. He stuck with his plans because he “knew that if I didn’t get out last night on that flight I wasn’t going to make it today.”

“I was just hoping to make it out, and I did,” he said.

Chicago Tribune’s Alice Yin, Sarah Freishtat, Talia Soglin and Shanzeh Ahmad contributed to this report.