I live in central Illinois. We get a big blow about every 10 years or so. The city can dig out in a couple days, but it can be a week for the rural people because of the drifting. It wasn't all that long ago(10 years?) that people had to be rescued from an interstate by the national guard during a south central Indiana blizzard.
I lived in Mercer county in NW IL for my first 62 years. The number of rural people living in the south central part of that county has dropped a LOT. There was 11 people in a 1 mile radius of the farm my wife and I lived on, when we moved to TN 7 years ago.
But the townships all have road graders w/snowplow attachments. And most of the farmers have big loader tractors to clear out their driveways.