No School Today, Travel Advisories, and All That

The storm didn't look too bad in town, but I'm told we had whiteout conditions in the country. That would explain the early-morning automated phone call, telling us that school was cancelled today. A prudent decision, I think.

I see that folks south and west of us, in and around Worthington, lost power during the storm. That's more than an inconvenience. Folks employed at factories won't have work until power is restored: which could take a day or two. There's the matter of keeping homes warm, too. It's not particularly cold, around freezing, but most heating systems need electricity.

Travel in Benton County, about an hour east, isn't advised. The Sheriff's Office there probably doesn't want to be recovering bodies later on, and I don't blame them.

My wife and #3 daughter stayed home this morning, instead of going to their usual out-of-town destination: again, a prudent decision in my opinion. Some folks may not have had much choice, and had to get somewhere today: or decided that whatever they had planned was worth the risk. The good news is that, as far as I've heard, nobody got killed.

An accident closed Highway 23 near St. Cloud, I-94 westbound near Munich was closed by another crash, two semitrailers hit each other on I-94 near Alexandria: but aside from power outages, travel advisories, and accidents, it's been a fairly uneventful storm.

In the news:

• "Minnesota News Briefs: Winter storm knocks out power in western Minnesota"
  Pierce County Herald (April 11, 2013, 3:09 p.m.)
• "Winter storm causing crashes in Douglas County"
  Al Edenloff, Echo Press, Alexandria (April 11, 2013, 12:10 p.m.)