The big dig begins today for millions of Americans buried under one of the largest snowstorms to hit the country in decades.
The behemoth storm — stretching across 30 states — knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of households, canceled thousands of flights and left countless motorists stranded.
The Midwest took the brunt. Two feet of snow fell in Racine, Wis., and the 15 inches to hit Milwaukee was the most in a single storm since 1979.
The worst conditions may have been in Chicago, where more than 20 inches of snow fell — the third-highest amount ever to arrive in a single storm. City officials closed Lake Shore Drive for the first time in years, and hundreds of motorists were stranded for 12 hours after several accidents on the iconic roadway.
Raymond Orozco, chief of staff to Mayor Richard Daley, said crews' efforts to rescue motorists were "severely hampered" by snowdrifts, high winds and whiteout conditions.
Jenny Theroux, 23, said she was stranded just 800 feet from an exit from 4 p.m. Tuesday until 4 a.m. yesterday. She repeatedly called the city for information.
"It was a very stressful experience toward the end, especially not knowing what's going on," Theroux said, after abandoning her car. "I'm just very confused as to why it all transpired this way."
Jaco Collins spent most of the night trapped in his truck, he told ABC News.
"The guy behind me here got stuck and pinned me," Collins said. "I was inside ... for almost seven hours."
Hundreds of cars remained on the roadway with nearly 100 tow trucks working to remove them.
Some, like Jeannie Mulcahy, abandoned their cars and couldn’t find them later.
"I spoke with a woman who basically told me she could give me no information about the location where my car was towed," Mulcahy told NBC News in Chicago about her conversation with a city official. "I said, 'So I pretty much have to just wander around, looking for my car until I find it?' and she said, 'That is correct.'"
Mulcahy didn’t know if tow trucks had moved her car, she told NBC News in Chicago. She abandoned the vehicle and headed home about 3:45 a.m. and said she wasn’t going to try to find it during the day.
"I'm going to leave it," she told NBC News in Chicago. "Last night was an ordeal that I don't want to relive."
The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for eight states: Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. So severe were the conditions that officials briefed President Obama.
Boston was expecting as much as 18 inches of snow by today, though some parts of the Northeast were spared the clobbering the Midwest took. New Yorkers woke yesterday to little snow but a lot of sleet, ice and freezing rain.
Almost 400,000 homes and businesses across the nation were left without power, and roughly 13,000 flights have been canceled so far this week due to the storm, making it the most disruptive of the winter. The massive post-Christmas blizzard forced about 10,000 cancellations.— AP and Reuters