While the weather was bad from the start, it was around Battle Creek when the snow picked up to the point that we were driving in and out of white-out conditions. There were times when we couldn't see more than a car-length ahead of the car. As this was Mera's (my Prius) first extended trip, let alone major snow storm, I was a little concerned about how she would perform. She did not disappoint, handling extremely well on the snow.
To make it through the worst of it, I followed a truck that was carrying some sort of load covered in a black material that was not letting the snow collect. I tried to give the truck as much space as possible without losing sight of it (although that was sometimes only a car -length. I learned quickly to switch lanes as the truck switched lanes as there was a least one time that another semi appeared out of the snow cloud without any warning. Relying on people's tail-lights was not a good idea as most of them were coated in snow. The dark shape of that truck was a saving grace. In fact, we waited longer than we originally planned before taking a rest stop so we wouldn't lose our advantage.
By Benton Harbor, the weather cleared. While snow still covered much of the road, the sun was actually out. Unfortunately, that meant that Mera got sprayed with salt. Her lights ended up being so coated that by the time we left the funeral home (we arrived safely, having picked up my brother in Chicago and having a rather uneventful trip from that point on) that night, her lights weren't able to illuminate the road. I had to scrub them before I could see anything on the drive to the cottage.
It was at the funeral home that I discovered just how fortunate we were. Only a few hours after our trip through southern Michigan, a series of chain-reaction accidents ended up closing the highway [update - it remained closed for almost 40 hours]. Over 150 vehicles [update - 193] were involved including a truck carrying fireworks (that exploded dramatically) and a truck carrying a chemical that forced the area to be evacuated [update - the resulting fire pitted the highway].
Suddenly, my daring strategy of following the truck with the dark tarp seems a little more foolish. I was confident in my driving, but so were over 150 other drivers.