Blizzard Elsa won’t soon be forgotten.
The National Weather Service said Shawano County received 33 inches of snow March 15-16. Cleanup went on for days after, with the best remedy being warmer temperatures that melted some of the piles.
“Cleanup continued into the evening hours of March 18 as we clear over 1,800 miles of state, county and town roads within Shawano County,” said Grant Bystol, Shawano County highway commissioner.
During the storm, winds of 45-55 mph and snowfall rates of 2 inches per hour created blowing snow and whiteout conditions with zero visibility.
“Crews would get through a roadway, and within hours, it was plugged and not passable again,” Bystol said. “Some of the most challenging conditions were created when we came across cars stuck and abandoned in the middle of the roadway.
“There were quite a few instances where the cars were left in the middle of a narrow town roadway, and our trucks could not get around them. This made some of the town roads a lot worse as we were not able to continue our service on those roadways.”
Sheriff George Lenzner said that 9 p.m. March 14 and 6 a.m. March 17, deputies handled 172 traffic- and weather-related incidents. These included 95 non-reportable accidents, 11 property damage accidents, one injury accident, five traffic hazards and 60 disabled vehicles.
“The above are just the weather-related complaints, not to include the other stuff we had going on,” Lenzner said.
While the courthouse and county government was forced to close March 16, the highway and sheriff’s departments reported to work as best they could.
“We have a lot of corrections officer that live quite a way out of town, so some could not make it in, causing staff to work 18-hour shifts,” Lenzner said. “One correctional officer stayed in a hotel in town so he could make it in.”
While the patrolling deputies were mostly at full staff, the dispatch center worked with a skeleton crew at times.
Over at the highway department, Bystol said the duration of the storm was challenging as they only have one crew.
“Crews worked 20-plus hours on Sunday, 20 hours on Monday, 18 hours on Tuesday and 15 hours on Wednesday,” he said. “We do our best to get the crew some rest, but these type of blizzard conditions require extreme service hours to try and keep roadways open.”
He said the department ended up using a combination of 5-FWD and Oshkosh V-plows in combination with four- 6-wheel drive graders with V-plows to open up many state, county and town roads that became impassible for the regular trucks.
“These V-plows typically do not get a lot of use but are kept on hand for emergency purposes,” Bystol said. “These vehicles are fully chained up, travel at a lower speed and typically do not exceed 25 mph.”
The NWS said the storm began as snow the night of March 14 before transitioning to a wintry mix of snow, freezing rain, and sleet across central and east-central Wisconsin after 3 a.m. March 15. This mix produced a few hundredths of an inch of ice in east central Wisconsin before changing back to all snow early that afternoon.
Snow became very heavy over central Wisconsin early in the morning of March 15 with snowfall rates up to 4 inches per hour. Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes were observed at times in thundersnow and thundersleet.
These heavy snowfall rates shifted east through the morning, reaching northeast Wisconsin around midday. Near-blizzard conditions developed in the afternoon, fueled by northeast winds gusting between 35 and 50 mph.
This combination of heavy falling snow and high winds created whiteout conditions and massive drifting. After a brief lull in snowfall that evening, heavy snow redeveloped from south to north early in the morning of March 16.
This second round of precipitation was intense, with snowfall rates reaching 1 to 3 inches per hour at times across the Fox Valley and lakeshore. The combination of this heavy snow and powerful north winds, gusting between 40 and 55 mph, resulted in a return to blizzard conditions.
Visibility frequently dropped to a quarter-mile or less, creating whiteout conditions that made travel impossible. Roads were severely impacted throughout the event with tow bans in place and some municipalities suspending plowing.
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
