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CHICAGO – A colossal blizzard roaring crossways a ordinal of the land unfit the nation's heartland with cover and snow, shuttering airports and schools and leaving normally bustling downtowns deserted.

The ugly assail billed as the poorest in decades delivered knock-out after knock-out as it prefabricated its way from Texas to Maine, transfer metropolis and the rest of the Midwest to a halt and prompting a region-wide deceive day.

"I'm usually skeptical most predictions of a bounteous storm," 50-year-old law concern professional Janet adventurer said Tuesday salutation patch inactivity at a downtown metropolis train station. "But I'm category of excited. I wasn't around for the assail of `67, or the assail of `79, or the assail of `99. I've uncomprehensible every the greats. I'm agog most experiencing it."

For the prototypal instance in history, the land of Siouan closed downbound Interstate 70 between St. Louis and river City cod to a season storm. The production in Tulsa, Okla., canceled its print edition for the prototypal instance in more than a century. And in Chicago, public schools called a deceive period for the prototypal instance in 12 years.

And it wasn't over yet. metropolis due 2 feet of snow, Newmarket more than 1 foot, Indianapolis an progress of ice, and the Northeast ease more cover and deceive in what's manufacture up to be a record season for the region.

Forecasters warn that cover accumulations could knock downbound whatever tree limbs and noesis lines. Ice also could affect installation service, modify as locomote drivers struggled to ready up with the deceive on many roads.

"Nights same tonight smell because you country a street and you invoke around and you can't modify tell you did anything," Kevin Briney said as he crowd his locomote through downtown South Bend, Ind., on Tuesday night.

The assail led metropolis officials to near the city's laboring and iconic Lake Shore Drive after a series of accidents, stranding whatever motorists and buses for individual hours overnight. The city's duty of crisis management said crews were ease struggling to get everyone off the roadway primeval weekday farewell and whatever grouping had forsaken their cars. Forecasters also warned that broad winds could push 25-foot waves from nearby Lake Newmarket onto Lake Shore Drive.

In New York, officials preemptively banned tandem-trucks of every sizes from a field interstate. New royalty City residents were urged to ingest mass installation and to country deceive and cover from blast hydrants.

In Oklahoma, rescue crews and the National Guard searched long for some motorists who strength be stranded along its field highways after whiteouts closed downbound metropolis and Oklahoma City.

For those who insisted on braving the elements, the risks were many. "If you don't have sufficiency render in your vehicle, you crapper separate out, the modify goes discover — and grouping crapper modify withhold to death," said Greg Cohen, chief director of the Roadway Safety Foundation.

Cities crossways region America closed downbound hours ahead of the snow. Scores of schools, colleges and government offices canceled activities or decided not to open at all. Thousands of flights were canceled crossways the nation.

The NFL did control to stick to its Super Bowl schedule, holding media activities at Cowboys Stadium in suburban metropolis as planned, though the city's ice-covered streets were deserted.

Even metropolis — with its legions of snowplows and its usual certainty in the face of season storms that would surely modify another cities — unerect under the storm's weight.

"This is nothing to play with here," said prince Butler, a lakefront ostiary peering through his building's glass doors at deceive blowing horizontally and in diminutive cyclones downbound the street. "This is gale obligate wind."

The twine gusts were brawny sufficiency to move the building's heavy revolving door moving by itself.

The management at Butler's antiquity called in extra employees for the storm. They bought the body party and offered to put them up for the period at a nearby hotel, but Butler designed to intend bag no concern what.

"If you're a genuine Chicagoan, you don't back downbound from this category of storm." But, he added, "if you don't attitude it, you'll pay a price."

Many businesses in the municipality designed to remain shuttered Wednesday, as did social attractions and universities.

Some parents were pleased the municipality took the thin travel of closing schools in a municipality that is normally proud of shouldering the poorest Mother Nature has to offer.

"They should cancel," said Sunjay Shah, 54, a sundries class manager stranded at a downtown hotel overnight, saying his 17-year-old son was thrilled with the deceive day. "How are students going to walk or verify trains (to class)?"

Not exclusive was dynamical in and around the municipality dicey, but flying in and discover of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport — a field U.S. hub — won't be possible at every until Thursday.

The selection by O'Hare-based airlines to cancel every their flights for a period and a half was destined to have ripple personalty at another U.S. airports, said transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman.

"Effectively movement downbound America's most important travel hub hits the system infinitely hard," he said most O'Hare. He said another U.S. airports not modify in the line of the assail should move to wager delays themselves correct away as a result.

The city's small airport, Midway International, hoped to resume flights weekday afternoon.

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Associated Press writers Karenic Hawkins, Don Babwin, Sophia Tareen, Tammy Webber and Barbara Rodriguez in Chicago, blackamoor Coyne in South Bend, Ind., Jim Salter in St. Louis and Justin Juozapavicius in Tulsa, Okla., contributed to this report.

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