While St. Paul received three inches of snow Sunday night and early Monday, it wasn't quite enough to prompt a citywide snow emergency for plowing -- or to launch the Winter Carnival's sled dog race slated for this weekend.
Still, city officials said that work crews had plowed and sanded arterial streets Sunday night and were focusing their efforts Monday on plowing residential streets.
St. Paul officials asked residents not to park their cars on the street while they continue the work of clearing the residential districts, which they said they expect to complete by Tuesday.
"The forecast calls for mild temperatures [Monday and Tuesday], but the temps will dip sharply come Wednesday, and we wanted to get a leg up on Mother Nature," said Dave Hunt, a spokesman for the St. Paul Public Works Department.
Hunt said that three inches of snow is the typical threshold St. Paul uses for declaring a snow emergency, sometimes less depending on the conditions. In this case, he said, temperatures were mild and the snow didn't amount to three inches until later in the day, providing little time to get the word out on a snow emergency.
Meanwhile, Winter Carnival officials announced that the North Star Sled Dog Race scheduled for Saturday and Sunday on Bald Eagle Lake in White Bear Township, which already had been bumped from this weekend due to lack of snow, had to be canceled.
The new snow was not enough "to prepare an adequate and safe trail," according to Sally O'Sullivan Bair of the North Star Sled Dog Club board of directors.
St. Paul crews were expected to salt city streets Monday night to prepare for forecasted freezing rain.
