BLOOMINGTON - Major employers in the Twin Cities and many area schools shut their doors for the day Friday after snowfalls ranging from 6 to 10 or more inches blanketed the area by early morning.

State Farm Insurance Cos., Country Insurance & Financial Services and Illinois State University all closed as employers expressed concern about safety on the roads. Illinois Wesleyan University, the McLean County courts and Bloomington and Normal libraries also were among the majority of Central Illinois institutions that did not open.

"We were in the middle of a winter storm warning," said Jay Groves, ISU spokesman, of the decision to close. "It was still snowing. The wind was blowing. There was about 10 inches of snow on the ground."

Classes were canceled at more than a dozen area schools districts, including Bloomington District 87, Normal-based Unit 5, Stanford-based Olympia and Colfax-based Ridgeview. Normal-based Heartland Community College canceled classes at 4 p.m. Thursday and did not open Friday.

Mitsubishi Motors North America also stopped production at its Normal plant at 7:30 a.m., one hour after the start of the workday, company spokesman Dan Irvin said. About 300 employees could not get to work, so it was difficult for the remaining employees to operate the line.

The closures Friday marked the second winter in a row that major businesses in Bloomington-Normal called off work because of heavy snowfalls, even though spokesmen for State Farm, Country and ISU agreed it's rare for weather-related closures.

Before December 2006, Country had not shut down for about 20 years, spokeswoman Chris Anderson said.

"We've had two winters where we've had some pretty big storms," State Farm spokesman Fraser Engerman said.

By 5 a.m. Friday, ISU maintenance crews already had done a good job of clearing sidewalks around campus, but the university still considered the danger involved in getting professors and some students to campus when it decided to cancel classes, Groves said.

"If it's bad enough for us to close, generally everybody's closed," Groves said.

Officials at State Farm, Bloomington-Normal's largest employer, originally met at 4 a.m. and made a call to delay opening until 11 a.m., Engerman said. They regrouped at 8 a.m. when management changed their minds, he said.

"The streets were pretty bad at that point. The decision was made to just close for the day," Engerman said. "The safety of our employees is first and foremost."

Insurance customers, however, could still call State Farm to file a claim even though no one was at the corporate headquarters. Calls automatically were transferred to locations across the country, Engerman said.

The condition of roads was the main reason why the Illinois Agricultural Association companies, including the Illinois Farm Bureau, Growmark and Country Insurance, decided to tell employees to stay home, Anderson said.

The organization also took into account the number of employees who live in the rural communities surrounding the Twin Cities who would have had to first dig themselves out and then tackle the main roads where snow was blowing and drifting, Anderson said.

But not all Country employees got to sleep in or stay by the fireplace all day.

"There is a small, but very important, group working in our claims area today," Anderson said.