Winter is here: First the snow, and now bitter cold

The weather outside was frightful, but the shopping was still delightful.

Saturday, one of the last big shopping days before Christmas, also was the snowiest day of the season so far, with about 5 inches of snow accumulating by early evening. Still, the malls were full of intrepid souls who refused to let the snowstorm or the recession dim their spirits. Travelers, however, found frustrating delays on highways and at airports.

Mary Bensman, 60, sat sipping coffee in Southdale Mall with shopping bags piled up on the chair next to her just as the storm was building up a head of steam Saturday morning.

"I bought my boyfriend a wallet -- which I think is pretty optimistic since we both just lost our jobs," she said. Her grandkids would get games "so we can do something together," and her brother a book.

She had saved all her shopping for the Saturday before Christmas, and was defraying costs with a fistful of Macy's coupons she had clipped from ads. "I'm doing it all in one day, and I chose the morning of the big snowstorm," said Bensman, of Minneapolis. "It's very peaceful, very nice, everyone is still kind of jolly."

Today, officially the first day of winter, the snow is expected to lighten up, but it will be colder. A lot colder -- temperatures are expected to drop to 3 below with 28- to 38-below windchills. Tonight's low will plunge to about 15 degrees below zero with windchills hitting minus 30.

Traveling this weekend could bring out the Grinch in many. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport was functioning at about half its normal capacity Saturday afternoon, with only about 36 flights per hour making it out, said Patrick Hogan, director of public affairs. Flight delays were averaging two to three hours. As many as 500 travelers were expected to be stranded Saturday night.

Spring Lake Park resident Donna Eiler and her family checked their bags at the airport Saturday only to find their flight to Pittsburgh had been canceled. The family is heading east for Christmas to be with Eiler's stepmother, partly because her father died in June. Now the earliest flight they can get will be Monday, she said.

The family headed home to Spring Lake Park, but the luggage? "It's in la-la land," Eiler said. "It's somewhere where they've got to dig it out."

Meanwhile, stranded traveler Jimbo Clark of Knoxville, Tenn., hopped on the light rail to downtown Minneapolis, relishing the chance to spend a day in the Twin Cities after his connecting flight to Grand Forks was canceled.

"It's actually kind of cool," said Clark, 24, who said he planned to look up some high school friends and maybe hear some live music Saturday night.

The wind and snow were so bad in southwestern Minnesota that the state Department of Transportation asked residents in 25 counties to stay off the roads.

The combination of Saturday shopping traffic and the weather caused numerous fender-benders and spinouts, and Twin Cities area transportation officials were a little testy.

Roads were being cleared by 200 snowplows, making for some close calls in the heavy traffic.

"People are driving a bit too fast," said Kent Barnard, MnDOT spokesman for the Twin Cities area. "People are not giving the plows enough room to work."

Even after many stores closed and the scramble for that perfect gift and holiday bargains ended, traffic in some areas was still busy. Lt. Mark Peterson of the State Patrol reported that roads were still "very active" after 8 p.m., but no serious injuries were reported.

But bad driving conditions didn't stop St. Paul residents Josh Orman and fiancée Julie Hall from some last-minute shopping at the Mall of America.

"It's a little slower for a Saturday, but there's still a lot of people here," said Chanh T Thach, 25, a sales associate at the mall's Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. "It took me awhile to find a parking spot."

Bensman said that she is taking a Buddhist approach.

"I'm just going to let it go," she said of the weather and her unemployed status. "There is nothing you can do about it anyway."

So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.