Chesterton Tribune

 

 

Salters called out; ice forces South Shore to suspend service

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Update - 2:07 p.m.: From the Northwest Indiana Commuter Transportation District: "We anticipate resuming service later today as weather improves. All trains will be returning East to discharge passengers to their originating stations.  South Shore regrets having to take this action but weather conditions did not permit us to provide a reasonable level of service."

 

By KEVIN NEVERS

Chesterton Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg’s dog got him up at 4:30 this morning.

Which is why the town’s streets were salted or being salted when folks left for work today.

“I couldn’t get back to sleep,” Schnadenberg told the Chesterton Tribune. “So I started listening to the weather. I was hearing reports of multiple accidents in Chicago, and I knew the temperatures were going to drop, so I sent the salters out.”

That was at 5 a.m.

When Dunelanders woke, they found their car windows glazed, the sidewalks treacherous, trees and bushes chandeliered by delicate pendants of ice. But the roadways in Chesterton were just wet, maybe a little slushy in places.

Out in the unincorporated county, Highway Superintendent Andy McKay reported, the roads were definitely slick at 5:30 a.m. But his salters were on the job as well and by 8 a.m. the ice had mostly been reduced to slush.

McKay added that his salters would stay out today until all the roads had been treated, in advance of this evening’s forecast cold snap, with overnight temps dipping into low 20s.

This morning’s freezing rain did prompt the Duneland Schools to call a two-hour delay.

NICTD

Meanwhile, just before 10 a.m. the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District temporarily suspended all South Shore train service, after the rush-hour commute was sent into disarray by “extreme weather conditions.”

At 6:13 a.m. NICTD reported westbound train 104 stopped in East Chicago “due to ice on overhead wire and then westbound train 106 stopped at the state line for the same reason. Two eastbound trains--205 and 7--were also annulled “due to late turn of equipment.”

NIPSCO

On the upside, the weather apparently gave NIPSCO a pass for once. At 8 a.m. the Northern Indiana Public Service Company was reporting a total of 779 outages, all but 20 of them, however, affecting customers in Schererville.

At 10:20 a.m. total outages had dropped to 28, none of them in Duneland.

Rainfall

For the record, around 0.4 inches of rain fell at the Chesterton wastewater treatment plant during Wednesday evening’s brief torrential downpour, with another 0.23 inches early this morning, for a 24-hour total--from 8 a.m. to 8 a.m.--of 0.63 inches.

Although the frozen ground caused quite a bit more runoff to end up in the town’s collection system than it would have following a summer storm, there was no diversion of flow into the 1.2-million gallon storage basin, Chief Operator Bill Williams told the Tribune.

 

 

 

 

Posted 1/12/2017

 
 
 
 

 

 

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