As Minnesotans, winter weather should be nothing new, but the first major snow system of the season is always reason for celebrating by some, and grumbling by many.
As The Pioneer Press reports, the weekend was good for Kent Eernisse. As manager of Frattallone's Ace Hardware on Grand Avenue near Dale Street in St. Paul, he saw a steady stream of customers coming in to buy everything from scapers and ice melt, to shovels and snow blowers. "We've been working hard for the past 2 1/2 weeks to get ready for the season, and it finally came," he said.
While the heavy snow was a boon for kids fashioning snowmen and building snow forts, it was also ideal for downing power lines.
Overall, an estimated 200,000 Twin Cities residents lost power at some point during the weekend, with 21,000 metro residents still without power at the time of publication, according to The Star Tribune.
Another Star Tribune article highlights the more dire outcomes of the snowy salvo. Throughout Minnesota the State Patrol responded to around 400 crashes, with 45 of those involving minor injuries. No one in the state was killed, but bad road conditions in northern Wisconsin are blamed for the death of 2 people.
Greg Spoden at the State Climatology Office guesses that this is the biggest pre-Thanksgiving snowstorm for the Twin Cities since 1991, the year of the Halloween monster.
Leave a comment