Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

If you’re heading home from session…

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Illinois

* IDOT’s winter road conditions map

* Weather radar

* National Weather Service

* Weather Underground

Be careful out there.

*** UPDATE *** These ice storms are awful. I just heard one of my trees crack under the pressure and fall down.

…And there goes another one.

*** UPDATE 2 *** Frankly, considering the amount of freezing rain that’s falling during this ice storm, I’m amazed that I still have electricity.

About two-point-four (M) million Ameren customers are without power this morning across swaths of central and southern Illinois and parts of Missouri.

That represents about 158-thousand total outages.
The region is being battered by a winter storm that is expected to dump six to ten inches of snow in some areas by this afternoon.

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Nov 30, 06 @ 12:09 pm

Comments

If you’re driving home from session and reading the interweb it’s probably not the weather’s fault that your car ended up in the ditch.

Comment by Snark Thursday, Nov 30, 06 @ 12:13 pm
Rich,

Thanks so much for posting this information on your website. It’s great!

Comment by Judy, Judy, Judy Thursday, Nov 30, 06 @ 12:43 pm
Regarding Idot’s road conditions. I would advise motorists to avoid all Idot routes with this storm approaching. They are in bad shape.(undermaned)

Comment by anon Thursday, Nov 30, 06 @ 5:07 pm
Rod doesn’t have to worry about travel conditions. Does he?

Comment by Buck Flagojevich Thursday, Nov 30, 06 @ 8:07 pm
Anon,
None of the IDOT employees who were let go in the material re-organization were highway maintainers. And it would appear that the jobs of those who were are getting done without those positions being refilled.

Comment by observer Thursday, Nov 30, 06 @ 8:27 pm
Drove from Oak Brook to Springfield- left around 4:30 pm, it started to get bad in Bloomington.

Comment by Shallow Pharnyx Thursday, Nov 30, 06 @ 10:32 pm
Downtown Springfield in total blackout at 2:36 am. sidestreets nearly impassible. All United flights out of Springfield cancelled until mid-afternoon. supposed to be in Washington DC for big dinner tonight. Ain’t gonna happen.

Comment by Larry McKeon Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 3:31 am
If you have a good UPS make sure modem and monitor are plugged into UPS and you can get on internet for limited time. My UPS should run for about two hours.

Comment by Larry McKeon Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 4:10 am
Things you can do with UPS (universal power supply) during blackouts.

I have three. One large one for small local area network. Computer, monitor and DSL modem still running after about two hours.

A medium sized UPS lasted just long enough to brew a pot of coffee. Now charging on car’s 115 volt inverter.

Small UPS running AM/FM radio with weather band and CD player.

By the way, set power on computer to laptop settings to reduce power consumptions so disk drive and monitor will hibernate after five minutes or so of non-use. I think I might get three or for hours of operation.

Comment by Larry McKeon Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 5:13 am
Legislators end veto session and Springfield gets a massive snow job.

Comment by coinkydink? Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 6:33 am
When can we expect our FEMA checks?

Comment by Yo! Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 7:42 am
Rich, I’ll go your cracked trees one better, the ComEd transformer in the alley behind my house exploded a little while ago. Power went out but came back on about a minute later.

The transformer is right next to a school yard. I called 911, who just told me to call ComEd. I told them they had a potential public safety problem but they didn’t care.

ComEd (once I got through the automated system) gave me the standard “we’ll get someone out to look at it.”

Comment by Anon Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 8:23 am
Did anyone in the workforce make to work?
Bet the blogosphere will be a little empty today.

Comment by Reddbyrd Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 8:52 am
To Reddbyrd, I went to work and was turned away at the door by some rent-a-security guard that doesn’t know our Department’s own emergency policy. Sweet, I get a three day weekend, but will have to put in a time off slip on Monday.

Comment by STATE EMPLOYEE Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 9:03 am
off topic-rich can you provide the roll call voters for the House & Senate on the 7% Cook County property tax cap legislation?

Comment by Ravenswood Right Winger Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 9:21 am
This is the first major outage in which I didn’t lose power. It sounds like Springfield is worse than St. Louis, though it’s not very good here. Pulling into the parking lot this morning, most of the cars are here from the night before.

And Larry McKeon is absolutely correct, I lost a power source and motherboard to the last storm because I didn’t have a UPS—not only can you power small things–it saves things plugged in when the power surges.

Comment by ArchPundit Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 9:25 am
We’re out of power as are hundreds of 1000’s here in the St. Louis metro area. This is the second major power outage in 5 months. Somehow the deep cold may be worse than the July heat. Time to start burying those electric lines.

Comment by Diane Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 10:20 am
Rich,

Did you notice that the IDOT State Highway Map site is “sponsored by Best Western (”Sponsor of the 2005-2006 Official Illinois State Highway Map”)?

Comment by Link Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 10:21 am