Metro freeways were littered with spinouts and crashes -- one of them proving fatal -- during the rush hour Friday morning, as commuters skidded and crept along snow-covered roads.
Also accumulating were snow emergencies, meaning that residents in St. Paul, Plymouth, St. Louis Park, Robbinsdale and elsewhere in the metro are being warned to get their vehicles out of the way of plows. But the state's largest city said Friday afternoon there will be no such declaration this time around.
Minneapolis notified its citizens that with "only 3 inches of snowfall and relatively warmer temperatures in Minneapolis, the city is not declaring a snow emergency." Even so officials are urging motorists to keep their vehicles off the streets until after the plows come by.
To the south and west of the metro, schools were either delaying their first bell or tacking on a day off in front of the weekend.
On the highways, there was no bias for what side of town suffered the most throughout the commute. Between 7:45 and 8:20 a.m., there were eight crashes on the metro freeway system. One of them, on Hwy. 13 and Interstate 494 in the south metro, involved a fatality.
One driver in the two-vehicle wreck was killed when the northbound motorist went out of control near Mendota Heights and was broadsided in the southbound lane, according to the State Patrol.
In the north metro, a Forest Lake police squad car that was stopped along the median on southbound I-35 was struck by an SUV. Police Capt. Greg Weiss said the officer seated in his vehicle was not hurt, nor was anyone in the SUV or in the van he had stopped to assist. Road conditions "were pretty slick," Weiss added.
On the edge of downtown Minneapolis, a spinout on eastbound Interstate 94 just past Hennepin Avenue created a jam-up through the Lowry tunnel and nearly back to West Broadway.