Major Snowstorm:

[RevGary]

Everyone listening to the idiot drivers that are trying to see how many cars they can bounce off of before rolling over?

 

[RevGary]

The National Weather Service has issued full blizzard warnings for most of southwestern, central and northeastern Wisconsin for 30 to 50 mile per hour winds, 12 to 16 inches of snow and blowing and drifting of snow creating white-out conditions and 3 to 8 foot drifts. Interstate I-43, Highway 41-141, Highway 172 and the circle beltline near Green Bay are officially closed at this hour by directive of the Emergency Operations Centers in the area. This includes ALL elevated bridges and overpasses in a 19 county area. Drivers who are venturing out in this storm are being given citations IF they become stalled, for not observing the official road closure orders. These orders will remain in effect until 10 AM Friday, Feb. 17 OR until such time as the snowplows can finish opening the roads. High temperatures over the weekend will be around 9 degrees with lows at minus 12.

Keep your scanners on - this is getting interesting...

 

[OpSec]

It's been tame here in the SE corner, but up north is not such a pretty picture. Even with the relatively "good" weather we've had there are still a bunch of bad drivers hitting everything in sight.

Gary: Where did you get that information above?

 

[SCPD]

Not much down here in Walworth County. Most everyone behaved themselves for once...even with all of the ice.

 

[RevGary]

It's been tame here in the SE corner, but up north is not such a pretty picture. Even with the relatively "good" weather we've had there are still a bunch of bad drivers hitting everything in sight.

Gary: Where did you get that information above?

It was released on two of the local TV stations with a crawler on the bottom of the screen both saying the same thing. I learned later on that the Claude Allouez Bridge and the Leo Frigo Bridge, both over the Fox River were shut down for a time due to high winds and high profile vehlcles being slammed into the guard rails. Highway 172 from the I-43 junction to the Highway 41 junction was shut down as well during the remainder of the "rush hour" because of numerous accidents but opened back up after 20:00 Hours on Thursday evening. The wreckers are still cleaning up wrecks and ditched vehicles this morning, from yesterday. According to what I heard on TV, some citations were issued when drivers drove around the barricades and became stuck themselves adding to the mess.

 

[RevGary]

Early Saturday Feb. 18 update -

Not that 16 inches of wind driven snow was bad enough - this morning, my Ultimeter 100® weather system just sent an alarm to my PC that a MINUS 64 degree wind chill reading was just monitored here at our Rectory office.

Hope everyone is getting through this extreme cold OK this morning. Actual ground level air temperature here is minus 17.4 degrees - winds are out of the north-northwest at 13 to 22 MPH.

Stay warm and keep the scanners on -

 

[RevGary]

I posted this inquiry in the eastern Canada thread...
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"On Thursday, February 16, during the heavy blizzard conditions locally in northeastern Wisconsin, I was searching a frequency block between 142 and 143 Mhz with an 8 element VHF beam pointed to the north-northwest. The only signal strong enough to break the minimum squelch setting was on 142.770. I checked the database and this seems to have originated in Thunder Bay, Ontario and that frequency is not in use in the northern US. I was just curious if anyone in the Thunder Bay area was searching the 154 to 157 Mhz block on Thursday and if so, did you receive any 450KM (300 mile) distant signals from our area down here? Thanks for any replies."
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Did anyone in Wisconsin or the UP of Michigan, who might read this, monitor any extreme long distance VHF hi-band signals during the blizzard? I also monitored a couple agencies in central Illinois that day... well over 250 miles away. Thanks...