And thank you for joining us on this snowy Sunday.
The storm that we've been preparing for all week
is here today and tomorrow care 11 weather,
warm days for the metro.
This is a live look at the Mississippi River and downtown
Minneapolis from our sky camp kind of hard to see downtown.
But if you go even further north, here is a live look at the harbor camp in Duluth.
You can see that the water pretty choppy there on Superior.
The flakes really coming down,
snow emergencies have been declared for many cities to
allow for plows to get through and of course,
clear the roads to be sure to check in with your local
authorities on parking restrictions as we move through the next 24 hours,
we have team coverage for you tonight. He wah
is out on the road in Mobile 11, Gordon Severson
at the airport where many families are coming and going from spring break trips.
But of course, we need to start with meteorologist, Jamie
Cel.
Yes.
Uh as you can see in the backyard, a few flakes,
they have certainly led up just a little bit,
but we've had that light to moderate snowfall around
the area as we get closer to 789 o'clock,
that's when we expect that intensity to ramp up across much of the area.
We'll start with a look at the satellite and radar and you can see again it's been, uh,
beginning to break apart in some areas of central and southern Minnesota.
In fact,
southwest Minnesota starting to see a little bit of it trying to mix in with rain.
But towards Albert Lee, towards Lacrosse and Rochester,
that's where we're starting to see the moisture
content really ramp up along with some energy.
And that's what we're watching for to make its way towards the metro
as we get closer again to 789 o'clock right now.
As we take a look for our watches and our warnings,
there have been some minor adjustments to it.
Much of the region still under a winter storm warning and that
will expire bit by bit as you go through Monday and into Tuesday
as, uh,
the intensity wears off and as the impact begins
to die down in some parts of the region,
but still heavy snowfall and blowing snow will be a concern tonight.
And into tomorrow, our winter weather advisory,
that is where we've seen a few explorations, a few cancellations
and that is because we're starting to see some
rain impacts down there and that's gonna be, uh, removing the snow pot
snowfall and the snow covered roads and the threat of slip
slip conditions
uh in that part of the state.
So again,
that's why you're gonna see some of these advisories
uh begin to cancel out through these evening hours.
There's a look at the road conditions towards Laverne Jackson,
even towards Mankato good conditions being reported,
but we still have snow covered roads out towards Orville up towards Alexandria.
Even Brainerd
for the metro, a lot of partially covered roads out there.
And as we were talking closer to eight o'clock
is when that snowfall intensity starts to ramp up.
So this is just the beginning of it.
And as we go into the overnight hours, conditions will be worsening,
we'll time everything out for you coming up in a few minutes.
All right. Thank you so much, Jamie.
There are a number of school closings for tomorrow.
We have those scrolling across the bottom of the screen
and when it comes to driving, if you can stay off the roads, you should,
there have already been a number of crashes all over the state.
The state patrol says statewide that there have been 217 crashes, 100 and
16 spin outs and five jack knifed semis.
Take a look at this though.
This is the Lowry Hill that was partially closed when a
spin out caused a chain reaction crash late this morning.
Luckily no one was seriously hurt there.
Then near Oakdale. This was the scene at 94 and 494 interchange.
Around noon, traffic came to a halt.
A vehicle rear ended another and ended up facing the wrong direction.
And sadly one person died in a crash on 35 in Burnsville this afternoon.
This happened in the northbound lanes south of county road 42.
The state patrol says that the driver slid off the road and hit a tree.
No other cars were involved in that accident.
If you have to travel, men do
is reminding you to drive slowly. We have our Heidi, we do
who is keeping tabs on the conditions right now. In
11
Morgan, we've been out on the roads for about a half hour and so far,
we've been in the West Metro.
I'm going to show you how the roads look right now.
So we are on 55 West were right over by Loretto.
And again, we started off in Golden Valley and we've been moving closer to Rockford.
And as you can see, the roads here have been pretty clear.
For the most part, much of the snow has been melting as soon as it hits the pavement,
but it's staying wet.
Traffic is moving as normal out here as well.
We've seen quite a few cars out on the road but
nothing out of the ordinary for this time of day.
On a Sunday.
We've seen plenty of plows out on the road as well. I saw some
in Golden Valley
is asking drivers to give pause plenty of room to do their job.
The city of Buffalo says city plows started going out
on the roads at 4 p.m. to plow the main roads
and they plan to go back out to plow the entire city starting at
2 a.m.
up there. It looks like we have
a
as well, just a little bit up from where we are. You can't quite see it just yet. But
yeah,
so far everything is calm out here and we'll plan to check back in with
you tonight at 10 p.m. with more on how conditions are back to you,
Morgan.
All right. Yeah, definitely one of those drives that you're kind of gripping
the steering w when I was coming in, at least to work,
he
now from the roads to the sky travel impacts are also being felt at MSP.
Not great timing with this storm.
As many Minnesotans are trying to get it to or to leave for their spring break trips.
Gordon Severson is live at the airport with the latest numbers of cancellations.
Hey, Gordon.
Hi.
Hi, Morgan.
Yeah,
airport officials tell me they got a little lucky
with the timing of this for spring break.
The busy days were on Thursday and Friday,
but here on Sunday it is still busy here at MSP.
Let's take a look at the board over here. You can see the cancellations in yellow.
Quite a few. Here on this side. We're talking about Houston, Indianapolis.
Las Vegas,
according to flight where there have been 117 flights canceled
here at MSP so far and another 268 delays.
And if you look deeper into
the numbers, about a third of the flights flying out of MSP have been delayed.
So far today, another 16% have been canceled.
So if you add those two together,
about half of the flights going out of MSP have been affected by this snow.
So far, flying into MSP have a little bit of a better shot.
Only about 25% of those flights have been delayed or canceled so far.
Let's take a look at some video from outside the
airport to see what we're seeing here at the airport.
You see low visibility,
see a lot of snow and the MSP actually activated
their full snow crew here to keep those runways open.
Their maintenance crew is going to be working around the
clock well into tomorrow morning to keep these runways clear.
Airport officials tell me their goal is to keep
at least two of those runways clear so they
can have a steady flow of traffic of airplanes coming in and coming out here in MSP.
They have a massive crew, a maintenance crew to keep these runways clear.
They tell me about 300
20 workers available between the ordinary staff that they
have here and contractors that they can bring in
and they have more than 180 pieces of equipment that they can use.
And the de icing team here at MSP is actually one of the best in the nation.
Delta actually brings their de icing crews from across the
country here to MSP every summer to do their training.
And so they are definitely some of the best in the business and they
are going to be putting those skills here to the test tonight back to.