Snow slows Twin Cities evening rush hour; snarls Duluth too
A snowstorm that peaked in time for the evening commute slowed traffic to an agonizing crawl across the Twin Cities on Tuesday.
"It's pretty much a standstill everywhere right now," Todd Fairbanks, a regional traffic management spokesman, said shortly after 5 p.m.
The drive home was double and often triple the normal time as the Twin Cities and other parts of Minnesota saw their second major snowfall of the season.
"We haven't had a snow storm of this significance this year during rush hour," Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Walker said.
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A wide area of Minnesota from the northwest through the metro area received 3 to 5 inches of new snow Tuesday on top of the 4 to 10 inches or more that fell across much of Minnesota on Saturday, when far fewer people had to be on the road.
MnDOT put about 200 plows on the road Tuesday, said Kent Barnard, another agency spokesman. Operators tend to take breaks during rush hour because the plows don't do much good when they're bogged down in standstill traffic, he said.
Barnard spoke has his car crept along Interstate 694 in the northern suburbs on his way to work a shift as a plow driver Tuesday evening.
"Every once in a while I get up to 10 miles per hour," he said.
The State Patrol reported dozens of accidents, but only a few involving serious injuries.
Many school districts canceled games and other after-school and evening activities, and some communities declared snow emergencies.
The snow was even heavier in Duluth, where an east wind off Lake Superior had dumped 13 inches of new snow on the low areas at the lake's western tip.
The Duluth Transit Authority pulled its buses off the streets in the evening, and National Weather Service meteorologist Kevin Donofrio said West Duluth could get 18 inches by Wednesday morning.
Spinouts brought traffic to a standstill on both the Blatnik and Bong bridges connecting Duluth with Superior, Wis. MnDOT spokesman John Bray said both bridges are so narrow that one stopped car effectively stops all others.
"You'll have one fender-bender, then two, then all the dominoes fall," Bray said.
