Snow causes spinouts in south metro; cold wave next week

How about a little snow to go with Winter Weather Awareness Week?

A dusting fell overnight and continued into the Wednesday commute, making roads slick in the south and east metro where snow covered roads.

The State Patrol responded to scores of crashes and spinouts on metro freeways, including three mishaps on Interstate 494 in Mendota Heights and Sunfish Lake. At least one driver slid off the road on northbound Hwy. 52 and landed in the ditch at Butler Avenue in West St. Paul, Minnesota Department of Transportation traffic cameras showed.

Drivers in the north suburbs saw only a few flakes as sharp cutoff kept most of the snow south of I-494.

At 8:30 a.m., Metro Transit reported that 31% of buses were running late with the average delay about 5 minutes.

November snow is hardly unusual, but the tenth of an inch that had fallen at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as of 6 a.m. is slightly ahead of normal. The first measurable snow generally arrives the second week of the month, the National Weather Service said.

The Twin Cities average 9.3 inches of snow in the month of November, meteorologist Brent Hewett said.

Further to the south, totals by Wednesday morning were a bit more impressive. As of 8:30 a.m., 5 inches had fallen in Stewartville, 4 inches in Austin, 3.9 inches at the Rochester Airport 3.5 inches in Rushford and 2 inches in Zumbrota and Caledonia, the Weather Service said.

A winter weather advisory was in effect until 9 a.m. for the southern third of Minnesota, the Weather Service said.

Temperatures will be in the 30s Wednesday through Friday and "a heat wave" is expected Saturday when the mercury will rise to near 40 degrees, Hewett said. Then temperatures will plummet into the 20s and teens by Sunday and Monday.

"It's not looking real great," Hewett said.

The very cold air moving in will be more typical of December and January than November, he said.