Pre-Christmas travel strongly discouraged

Dec. 23—MANKATO — A brutal pre-Christmas weather forecast was bringing some necessary but very unfestive advice for people who think there's no place like home for the holidays:

Don't go.

Travel conditions were bad Thursday afternoon, were set to worsen overnight and expected to be exceptionally dangerous through the rest of Friday and into Christmas Eve.

"It's important to be with family and everything, but if you have some distance to travel I would seriously consider postponing until conditions are better," said Scott Morgan, assistant engineer for the Minnesota Department of Transportation's District 7. "My family, we're already postponing for a day or two. I would suggest everybody consider that."

Morgan was basing that suggestion on weather past, weather present and weather yet to come. Speaking from the side of the road in Gaylord after a drive to check out conditions Thursday afternoon, Morgan spoke of the huge amount of fluffy snow on the landscape from recent snowstorms, the increasing winds and falling temperatures, and the blizzard and wickedly cold windchills that were looming.

"This is life-threatening conditions," he said, warning people living in wind-protected areas of the Minnesota River Valley that highways in the open countryside are going to look very different. "You get outside the protected areas and the visibility drops really quick, and you start getting drifts. By the time you realize how bad it is, it can be really difficult to get back someplace (safe) again."

Shawn Cable, chief meteorologist for KEYC-TV, has revised his holiday travel schedule as well. Plans to drive to the town of Morgan to see his mother have been pushed back to Sunday. And he was leaving open the possibility of delaying the visit longer if MnDOT crews still have work to do on Christmas Day to get roads in safe driving condition.

"I've been there before where you just say the heck with it and go," Cable said. "But this storm is seriously one to stay put. ... It's been a while since we've had one like this. This is a long-duration, life-threatening storm."

Cable's counterparts at the National Weather Service in Chanhassen made it unanimous in the forecast discussion posted mid-afternoon Thursday. Under the "KEY MESSAGES" section, the NWS forecaster wrote: "Life-threatening conditions will arrive with increasing winds, decreasing windchills, and significantly reduced visibility overnight. Stranded travelers could be susceptible to hypothermia and frostbite within minutes. The worst conditions are expected Friday afternoon through Saturday morning, with gusts peaking at 45-50 mph. Please do not travel."

For Mankato and most of the rest of south-central Minnesota, it was a trifecta wintertime trouble this week. There was a warning for a midweek snowstorm predicted to drop a half-foot of snow. There was a blizzard warning starting noon Thursday and continuing through 6 a.m. Saturday due to an uptick in winds. And added last was a windchill warning for Thursday evening through 6 p.m. Christmas Eve with real-feel temperatures bottoming out at -36 early Friday but staying at -22 or worse from Thursday afternoon through noon on Christmas.

And there was little indication the weather folks were overhyping the forecasts. Snowfall of 5-9 inches was predicted early in the week for the winter storm warning, and by the time the flakes stop falling, the totals were just a hair below that range from Green Isle (8.5 inches) to Montgomery (6.5) to Waseca (5.3) to Mankato (4) to New Ulm (6.3).

The big winds arrived on schedule, too, with gusts hitting 30 mph just before 6 a.m. Thursday at the Mankato airport, rising to 37 mph in the afternoon. On several highways in southwestern Minnesota, visibility had dropped to less than a tenth of a mile by late afternoon.

The gusts were forecast to stay above 30 mph all the way through 5 p.m. Christmas Eve, hitting 40 mph by 2 a.m. Friday and continuing above that level for the ensuing 25 hours, topping out at 49 mph late Friday afternoon.

Actual air temperatures dropped below zero just before 5 p.m. Wednesday in Mankato, bottomed out at -13 Thursday morning and were forecast to stay below zero through much of the rest of week until early Sunday.

Windchills, which reached -40 degrees at about 4 p.m. Thursday in Mankato, were predicted to be -30 or worse throughout all of Thursday and Friday.

For Morgan and the plow drivers at MnDOT, it means the snowpacked spots on highways will be difficult to address.

"When it's this cold, a lot of our chemicals don't work as well," he said.

And even if the chemicals can melt the ice, the result is a wet spot that tends to capture blowing snow and can actually make the situation worse by creating a new larger icy patch. The relentlessly cold temperatures also mean the new snow across the landscape hasn't developed a crust to keep it in place, so it will be on the move, filling ditches and making highways vulnerable to drifting.

And if the visibility approaches zero, the plows will be pulled even before their normal overnight break that starts at 9:30-11 p.m. and continues until somewhere around 4 a.m. With howling winds overnight, morning travel conditions Saturday could be rough even if the wind speed has subsided somewhat.

"It'll take some time to beat the drifts out of the way and get the roads open again," Morgan said.

He strongly advises anyone who is thinking about traveling prior to Christmas to first look closely at the 511mn.org website, which has maps highlighting road conditions and closures throughout the state, stationary highway cameras and mobile plow cameras to show video of roads and visibility, weather stations reporting temperatures and wind speeds, and other critical information.

For those who are not dissuaded, packing a winter survival kit is imperative, Morgan said. And travelers can give plow drivers a gift by slowing down, providing plows with space to work and putting away phones and other distractions.

Cable's final advice is for those who make a failed attempt to be home for Christmas, finding themselves in a ditch instead.

"For the love of god, do not leave your car in a storm like this," he said.

The yard light at the farm is always farther away than people think, whiteout conditions can return without warning and those windchills are going to be merciless, Cable said: "You're not going to last very long in that."

So sit in the car until help arrives, even if it bruises the ego to not be self-reliant.

"You may feel like an idiot," he said. "It's much better than being frozen solid in a snowbank."