BY PETE WICKLUND
AND BRIDGET THORESON
Journal Times | Posted: Friday, March 21, 2008 12:00 am
RACINE COUNTY - Regency Mall closed. The buses stopped. Downtown Racine was a ghost town. Attendance was light at the Marcus Theaters at the Renaissance.
Those were just some of the results of a Good Friday snowstorm that was expected to leave an estimated 16 to 19 inches of wet, heavy, slushy snow in parts of Racine County before it ended early this morning.
The storm led to numerous fender benders and vehicles in ditches, but no serious crashes as of 9:30 p.m. Friday, local police, the State Patrol and Racine County Sheriff's Department reported.
A State Patrol officer received minor injuries in an accident on Interstate 94. For more on that story, turn to Page 14A.
As of 8 p.m., the National Weather Service forecast office in Sullivan reported that as many as 12 inches of snow had fallen on Racine County and as many as 10 inches in neighboring Kenosha County.
The Weather Service said it was possible that, before the storm ended early this morning, as much as 19 inches could have fallen in the extreme northern parts of the county, namely Caledonia, Norway and Raymond.
While the storm caused early closure of most stores at Regency Mall as of 5 p.m., and early closings at many smaller businesses in the county, the storm wasn't keeping everybody inside.
Andrew Freres, 22, was happy to get a little time off from his engineering work-study job to visit his family and build a 6-foot tall Easter snow bunny in the family's front yard on Weymouth Place in south Mount Pleasant.
Freres is a junior studying engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has been undertaking a work cooperative program at the Kohler Co. headquarters near Sheboygan. He said the job doesn't afford him much time to get outside, so he said the spur-of-the-moment spring break snowsculpting project was a chance for a good workout.
The snow stopped bus service in Racine early Friday afternoon. Curtis Garner, executive director of the Racine Belle Urban System, said the last pickups occurred between 1 and 2 p.m. and that buses were back in the yard by 2:30. Normal service was expected to be in place by this morning, Garner said.
Buses Friday were "getting stuck on the residential side streets, and at railroad crossings, anyplace there was a hill we had trouble," Garner said.
As of 7 p.m. Friday, all flights in and out of General Mitchell International Airport were
cancelled due to low visibility.
Flight delays also were possible today, airport officials said, and travelers are advised to stay in touch with their airlines regarding their travel plans.
The Racine Public Works Department had every piece of snow-removal equipment out as of 3:10 p.m. Friday, said Bill Fulstrom, the department's general foreman.
"We will work on it until it stops, until we get it done," Fulstrom said. "We'll work on it 'round the clock if we have to, which it looks like it's going to take."