ST. LOUIS • It was supposed to be a wild winter storm of "historic" proportions with predictions of devastating ice build-up followed by a heavy, nearly two-foot layer of snow.

But by most early estimates, the year storm that hit the St. Louis area Tuesday could hardly be described as epic.

Sure, the storm brought freezing rain, ice and a few inches of snow in St. Louis, a winter Midwestern blast one might expect in January.

But historic? That might depend where you live, forecasters say.

At the National Weather Service office in Weldon Spring, post-mortem questions about the accuracy of Monday’s forecasts depend entirely upon location.

"When you talk about the forecast for the immediate metro area, it wasn’t absolutely correct," said Jim Kramper, a meteorologist at the local office. "Not far west of here, we nailed it. I-70 doesn’t get closed every day."

Even what hit downtown was a big event, he said. "Getting two to three inches of sleet isn’t normal," Kramper said. "Equating that to snow gets you roughly eight to 10 inches."

As it happened, the city received 3.1 inches, mainly of compact sleet. But Old Monroe, Mo. had 10 inches of snow and sleet. Parts of Lewis County, Mo., north of Hannibal, 22 inches. Sedalia was hit with 21 inches, Columbia 17, Jefferson City 14, and Hermann 12. It was all part of the storm that brought heavy snow from Oklahoma to Chicago, where 22 inches fell.

Kramper said the clash of cold air from the Plains and Gulf moisture created a mix of air aloft that kept temperatures above freezing about 5,000 feet over St. Louis. He said falling snow melted through that band and then turned to sleet as it fell through the cold air near the surface.

"Our task is to give the public the best of what we think is going to happen," he said. "We could hedge to no end, but the bottom line is that we give it our best shot. I don’t think anybody overdid it. The potential was for a big storm. A large amount of something was going to fall. That happened, and we had a big storm here."

He said precipitation across the metro area ranged from about .8 to 1.3 inches of water.

Road crews worked all night and through Wednesday in the St. Louis metro area to clear highways and major routes. At 2 p.m. the main highways were mostly clear but remain wet, said Drew Gates, a spokesman for MoDOT.  Secondary roads are still partly covered or covered this afternoon.

Gates said drivers should be aware of potential slick spots on the highways and roads as temperatures drop and freeze wet pavement. This afternoon and tonight crews in the St. Louis area will focus on ensuring on- and off-ramps are clear.

In Foristell, truckers stranded when Interstate 70 closed overnight got underway again on Wednesday. Carrie Winebarger, who works at the Travel Centers of America truck stop in Foristell, said truckers seemed unfazed by the storm.

"Our truck drivers are great people," she said. "They're used to this."

Motorists can check road conditions at www.modot.org

Across the St. Louis area, wind speeds are forecast to pick up today, increasing worries by Ameren that gusts will bring down power lines.

So far, almost no one is without power in the St. Louis area. Ameren Missouri reports that 97 of its customers — including 40 in St. Louis County — are without electrical service as of 7:30 p.m. The situation is more severe in Illinois, where Ameren Illinois says about 4,700 customers — out of more than 1.2 million — are without service. Most of the outages are in central and eastern Illinois.

Southern Illinois was hit mainly by freezing rain that formed ice of ½ inch to an inch. Along the heaviest swath of ice, roughly from Chester through Mt. Vernon and Salem, about 26,000 customers of Ameren Illinois remained without power by midday today, a spokeswoman said.

In Salem, which had an inch of ice during yesterday’s storm, frozen switches and trouble with main transmission lines cut power to the whole city about 8 p.m. yesterday. Ameren had restored power to all but about 400 Salem-area customers by mid-morning.

Salem, about 70 miles east of St. Louis, is home to about 8,000 people.

Salem Police Chief Ron Camp said residents began reporting wires down and individual outages about 6 p.m., followed by a blackout two hours later.

"The whole town went dark," Campo said. "It was weird. I drove home about midnight through total darkness."

He said about two-thirds of the city got electricity back about 4 a.m.

The 100 members of the National Guard who were assigned to help out at police stations in St. Louis city and county were expected to be released Wednesday after having little to do. Another 100 were on standby in Festus for route clearance and debris removal.

On Wednesday, six National Guard members were dispatched to Lincoln County to drive police and paramedics to calls in Humvees because high snow made difficult for emergency vehicles to manuever, a spokesman said. Six more were sent to Hannibal, Mo., to drive police officers around on routine patrols because many streets hadn't been cleared of the more than 20 inches of snow in that area.

On Tuesday, two guardsmen in a Humvee drove a county police officer to a house fire in Affton; police cars in South County were having trouble navigating some subdivisions.

There's a chance the Guard members in St. Louis will be sent elsewhere in the state, to help in areas in mid-Missouri that were slammed with huge snowfall, though no such order had come yet.

Statewide, members of the National Guard are also on duty in Springfield and Kansas City. On Tuesday, a guard Humvee helped take a pregnant woman to the hospital who was in labor. The ambulance couldn't get to her, said Capt. Tammy Spicer of the National Guard.

The Guard also has been used to take doctors and nurses to work at hospitals in Kansas City and Springfield, she said.

Spicer said the guard is called out by the governor but work for local officials, and it's up to them to decide when they are no longer needed.

The snowstorm Tuesday was pretty much a bust in St. Louis, but now cold and wind are the concern.

Flurries are lingering afternoon but building in behind them is very cold air. Temperatures will drop to below zero tonight and early tomorrow, the weather service says. Along with the cold will come breezes, producing wind chill values of 15 to 24 degrees below zero overnight and into about noon Thursday.