Winter storm wallops southern Illinois

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) -- Thousands of people were without electricity and hundreds of schools remained closed Wednesday in southern Illinois after the second wave of a winter storm buried the region under as much as a half foot of snow and ice.

The storm was a one-two punch for much of the area, following up a layer of sleet and freezing rain with a pounding of snow -- in some cases totaling 9 inches around Iuka in Marion County and near Nashville in Washington County. Many of St. Louis' Illinois suburbs got about 6 inches.

The weight of the precipitation snapped tree limbs, sending them onto power lines which darkened many homes and businesses. About 8,600 customers of Ameren were without power, as were 6,000 members of the Southern Illinois Electric Cooperative based in the town of Dongola, where a spokeswoman for the co-op said some of the outages may last into next week.

"It's frustrating, a nightmare. Exhausting," Jerri Schaefer said of the aftermath of the storm that knocked out seven of the cooperative's 13 substations, affecting customers mostly in Alexander, Pulaski and Massac counties.

For the second day in a row, classes at hundreds of schools in the area -- including Southern Illinois University's campuses in Carbondale and Edwardsville -- were scrapped because of the storm that by Wednesday was finally slithering into Indiana.

Also, Wednesday night's Missouri Valley Conference basketball game in Carbondale between the Salukis and visiting Missouri State was postponed for a day.

Near Mascoutah just east of St. Louis, the foul weather crimped staffing at Scott Air Force Base, where only "mission-essential" personnel were required to report for work. All other base employees were on telephone standby "until further notice," the site's information hot line said.

Shovel-weary Illinoisans hoping for a fast melt-off might get their wish this weekend, with the arrival of southerly winds and temperatures expected in the mid- to upper 30s that should make the snow vanish, National Weather Service meteorologist Gary Schmocker said.

"There might not be a whole lot of it left by the time Monday comes around," he said.

Better yet, he said, no more snow is expected soon.

"We've got sunny skies right now, and the storm system has moved on," he said. "Now we just have the cold weather."