Midwest gets first big snowstorm of warm winter

MILWAUKEE — An unusually mild winter finally gave way to the Midwest's first big snowstorm of the season Thursday, blanketing a region unfazed by a white Thanksgiving in a layer of powder and pack that forced all-too-happy snow plow drivers off their couches and into the streets.

The storm dumped several inches of snow on western parts of Wisconsin and Iowa before moving eastward into Milwaukee, St. Louis and Chicago, where up to eight inches were expected to fall by Friday morning.

In a typical year, such a storm would hardly register in the upper Midwest. But for virtually the entire season, cold air has been bottled up over Canada. La Nina, the cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that affects weather worldwide, has nudged the jet stream farther north. And air pressure over the northern Atlantic has steered storm systems away from the East Coast.

For Steve Longo, a 47-year-old chiropractor from Wauwatosa, Wis., the wait to try out the cross country skis he got for Christmas was excruciating. He and friend Alex Ng, 56, wasted no time in hitting the trails at the Lapham Peak cross country ski area, about 25 miles west of Milwaukee.

"I wasn't worried," Longo said. "I was just anxious."

"This is Wisconsin," a confident Ng said. "There's going to be snow."

The storm dumped 2 to 6 inches of snow on eastern Iowa by Thursday evening, and was expected to drop 3 to 8 inches total on southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois as it moves further into the Northeast on Friday, according to Richard Castro, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

While the dry weather has been an unexpected boon to many cash-strapped communities, which have saved big by not having to pay for plowing, salting and sanding their streets, it has hurt the seasonable businesses that bank on the snow.

"If people don't see it in their yards they are not likely to come out and ski and snowboard so this is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful for us," said Kim Engel, owner of Sunburst Ski area in Kewaskum in southeastern Wisconsin, as she watched the snow come down out the window.

Rob Moser, a snow plow driver from Elkhart, Ind., said he couldn't wait for the flakes to start to fall. The weather service said lake effect snow could mean parts of Michigan and northern Indiana could get up to a foot.

"I love it. I make money plowing snow and I'm all about snowmobiling, so I love it," Moser said. "We haven't had enough snow to do much."