7 inches but no snow emergency in St. Paul? Here’s why.

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
Updated ·3 min read

After as little as 3 inches of snowfall, St. Paul usually calls a snow emergency, setting into effect a 96-hour chain of procedures that begins at 9 p.m. of the first day with a heavy focus on plowing major arterial and collector streets.

That gives residents all night to figure out where to store their cars before plows hit residential side streets the next morning.

This winter, however, has been anything but usual, and the 6.9 inches of snow at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Wednesday night — a Valentine’s Day record and the biggest snowfall of the 2023-24 season — didn’t set off the typical alarm bells with city officials.

After conferring with plow crews and Mother Nature, St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw decided to heed the suggestions of both and take advantage of relatively sunny skies on Thursday morning to clear residential streets first.

An anticipated temperature drop on Friday factored into his reasoning to get started on side streets a day early.

“If we had called a snow emergency, we’d be getting into the residentials later, when it’s colder, and having less of an impact,” Kershaw said.

In other words, no one was required to move their cars. Instead, plow crews went out at 10:30 a.m. Thursday to spend the day clearing drive lanes between rows of parked cars. The goal of the “center cuts” was to take advantage of the warmer weather by cleaving a fast path through residential areas, as many a St. Paul resident has called City Hall to request after a big snowfall.

Mother Nature could take care of the rest without curb-to-curb snow removal, Kershaw predicted. Rising temperatures over the weekend will likely help. Highs in the 40s are expected early next week.

“The sun right now is a lot stronger than it was a month ago,” said Kershaw on Thursday afternoon. “We’re in a winter where there’s no snow by the curb. There’s nothing to clean up by the curb.”

Kershaw said pretreating major roads — arterials and collector streets — with brine on Tuesday and Wednesday left them in good, drivable condition by Thursday, so the initial focus of a traditional snow emergency would have been moot, anyway. He said city crews don’t usually salt residential streets due to cost and environmental concerns, though they did some last year following record snowfalls and likely would do a small amount where needed overnight Thursday and into Friday.

Amid record snowfall last season, St. Paul called seven snow emergencies before instituting a one-sided parking ban for about 28 days last March. This season, with long stints of balmy temperatures that are likely to make this the warmest winter on record in the Twin Cities, the city has yet to institute a single snow emergency. Minneapolis also chose not to call its first snow emergency Thursday.

Wednesday’s snowstorm nearly doubled the season’s total accumulation in the Twin Cities: 14.2 inches, which is more than 20 inches below average.

“We’ve got two extreme winters,” Kershaw said. “Last winter was the most precipitation ever, and this year we’ve barely had any. We’ve tried to be innovative. Some things have worked, some things haven’t. But one thing we’ve heard loud and clear (from residents) was they wanted us to get into residentials faster.”

Crews are expected to continue to plow center cuts and salt residential streets well into Friday. To sign up for snow emergency alerts, visit StPaul.gov.

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