Area survives first winter storm of the season

It appears most of the area has emerged unscathed from the winter storm that passed through yesterday and last night. There were a a couple reports of transformers blowing and some branches on wires but no widespread power outages were reported. As of 4 AM Wednesday morning, Alliant Energy’s website showed no customers without power in the Fond du Lac area.

Light snow fell most of the day and around 3 PM the snow started getting heavier which led to some widespread traffic issues. The first major issue came out of Ripon where several vehicles were getting stuck trying to go up a hill in the city. Overturned and jackknifed semi blocked 41 in different locations throughout the day. Early on a truck overturned in the northbound lanes in Brown County. The crash happened at 4 AM and the northbound side was closed for five hours while crews worked to remove the truck. Later, just before 4 PM, a semi jackknifed in the northbound lanes near Kaukauna. That incident closed the lanes of traffic for three and a half hours.

In Fond du Lac County, The sheriff’s office handled 17 calls of crashes and vehicles in the ditch through 11 PM. The worst was on State Highway 26 north of Rosendale
where two vehicles collided injuring two people and completely blocking the road.

As of press time this morning, no official reports have come in from the National Weather Service as far as how much snow has fallen, but local measurements from the public show 3-4 inches fell over parts of Fond du Lac and Dodge County.

Another 1-2 inches is likely to fall starting tonight and into Thursday morning with another potential storm passing the area this weekend.