Still cold; warmer weather ahead

Rollover
A rollover on westbound Interstate 694 at White Bear Avenue snarling snarling Friday morning traffic.
Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Transportation

This morning's commute was rocky.

There were dozens more accidents and rollovers during this morning's rush hour, although motorists seem to have grown accustomed to the hazards of sub-zero weather.

The pace of crashes slowed a little from yesterday, but black ice still slowed traffic with rollovers, spinouts and crashes across the Twin Cities.

The temperature reached 21 degrees below zero in the Twin Cities this morning, the same as the day before, but there was no extreme wind chill.

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Police reported glare ice across the freeway in the area of Interstate 94 and Highway 101 in Rogers.

"We're going to be out here all morning," one trooper said of the intersection.

Interstate 35E between downtown St. Paul and Maryland Avenue was also slippery and dangerous. Police called in more than four incidents in that area.

Trucks sanded and salted for hours, but the extremely low temperatures mean that chemicals aren't having much effect on the black ice left on the roadway by condensing car exhaust.

Many schools statewide were closed or delaying starts Friday due to the cold.

Two men died in separate incidents in St. Paul this week as a result of the bitter cold.

The Ramsey County medical examiner's office said Thursday that 77-year-old William Romell died of hypothermia. He was found dead outside his home in St. Paul's North End on Tuesday morning - when it was 14 degrees below zero.

Don Gorrie, chief investigator for the medical examiner's office, said Romell used a walker. It wasn't clear whether he slipped and fell.

A 70-year-old Arizona man who was apparently living in a car died at Regions Hospital after he was found Wednesday morning, leaning over the car's trunk. It was five degrees below zero.

Gorrie said it appears he also died of hypothermia, but other tests are pending.

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(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)