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Waited inside them, or if they were lucky got rescued on snowmobiles. they had 20.2 inches of snow reported at o'hare international airport. the weather channel's mike betts is in chicago now. how do things stand? are the roads now open? have things cleared up? >> reporter: very resilient people here in chicago. that's for sure, contessa. almost business as usual now. the sun is out. i want to show you 20.2 inches, where is it? this is the magnificent mile on michigan avenue. sidewalks are clear, the roadway is clear, but you've got to put the snow somewhere. i mean, look at the big old piles ...

You saw the conditions you've maybe never reported through before. explain what are they like today? >> it was kind of like an being in the middle of a hurricane and snowstorm all at the same time. 70 mile-an-hour winds, horizontal snow, thunder and lightning all over the place for 2 1/2 hours. here we are, number three all-time with 20.2 inches of snow at o'hare. it would normally be an area of steps now. it's snow packed with knee deep snow. people were skiing to work this morning. not surprising. things are improving. we've got the lake bands that head to the east and heading down towards s...

Night. and now it's at about 20.2 feet. we're at near record strange. major flood stage, but not expected to come back down below flood stage really until late wednesday into thursday. so we've got quite some time before this river really gets below the danger zone. and what i mean by danger zone is, well, usually after a river crests, we can relax, but because of this situation where you have all of that pressure on this very, very old and quite frankly not well designed or built levee back in the late 1800s you've got pressure on this until it goes below flood stage. the next three days are ...

World war ii. we're talking about record rains leaving parts of new england under water. major roads closed, homes flooded and residents evacuated. a state of emergency in rhode island. our reynolds wolf is on the banks of the river in cranston. reynolds, look, we're expecting this river to crest pretty soon here, aren't we? >> reporter: absolutely. tony, originally the river was forecast to get to 20.2 feet and it surpassed that at 20.2 and it could still get higher. if you wonder why this happens the answer is simple. we had 15 inches of rainfall in the month of march in this area, an all-ti...

It dire. you were talking about it being one of the wettest marches in history. 15.42 inches of rainfall fell this month alone. 7.9 inches of rainfall fell on tuesday. and what you see around me is the river. that's the pawtuxet river overflowing its banks and moving through this area of cranston. yesterday they were out scouting a position and came in this area. this was all dry. can you see the water has come up higher. originally what's interesting is the forecast was expected the river to rise 20.2 feet. it surpassed that, 20.62 is the latest reading and has a lot of people concerned. this...