Area gets blast from winter Whiteouts

hinder travel

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Christine Gough got to class at South Central Technical College in Mankato Tuesday morning only to find out the school was closed because of weather.

She took U.S Highway 14 back home to New Ulm. She estimated the drive took her about 50 minutes -- much longer than normal.

"It was snowing and blowing. It wasn't fun," she said.

Like many, many other motorists around the area and the state, Gough's drive was delayed by blizzard-like conditions caused by high, sustained winds, constantly falling snow and low visibility.

Many other area schools -- from Madelia and St. James to New Ulm and Sleepy Eye to GFW and Cedar Mountain and Red Rock Central -- closed early because of the blowing snow.

Harold Remme, Superintendent of District 88, said cancellations went as far as a fifth-grade field trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation reported adverse conditions on state roads within a 60-mile area around New Ulm for most of the day. It categorized driving conditions on state highways 258, 30, 4 and 68 as "hazardous" because blowing snow. Packed snow, which can turn to ice after being constantly driven over for a long enough period of time, was also a factor in the categorization.

Lt. Dan Hillighosh of the State Patrol said troopers in the Mankato district, which serves 10 counties in south central Minnesota, handled "a significant amount of crashes" all over the area. He said most of the crashes involved vehicles that went off the roads. A few were minor collisions and a couple were described as serious although no fatalities were reported.

"I would say it's pretty typical (for this kind of weather)," Hillighosh said. "Had this happened in December, the numbers would've been worse."

The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for many of the counties in southwestern and southcentral Minnesota early Tuesday morning. The warning area began at the South Dakota border and went southeast along the Minnesota River and ended at Freeborn and Steele counties just north of the Iowa border. The NWS did not issue warnings for eight counties in the most southwestern portion of the state.

Meteorologist Rick Hildebrand of the NWS in Chanhassen said winds were moving at speeds in between 35-40 mph from Montevideo to New Ulm and Fairmont. He said the high winds were caused by some arctic winds that drifted south from Canada and aligned themselves with the jet stream.

"This is the first time this season that this has happened," he said.

He said that pressure system is expected to pass even farther southward to South Dakota today.

Meanwhile, as cars slid and skidded around on the roads, Ely Vogel and Adam Wels made their rounds to a few houses across the street from the Brown County Courthouse in New Ulm. Both Vogel and Wels work for Adam's Lawn Service, a business owned by Wels that offers snow removal.

"This is an unusual winter," said Vogel. "But the more often it snows, the better."