Snowed In

Over the weekend, Minneapolis was pummeled with almost a foot of snow. It began on Friday night and snowed all the way through Sunday morning. This is nothing new for Minnesotans, but I was surprised and irritated by the city's reaction to it. The city did not declare a snow emergency until Sunday afternoon. A "snow emergency" (for those of you who may not know what that is) is when the city tells you to get your car off the street so the plows can come through and if you don't do it, you get towed and/or ticketed. It's awesome. While it would have been nice to be able to drive safely on Saturday, this was not my main problem with Minneapolis' reaction to the snow. The problem was that, even though the plows were not supposed to come through until after 9:00pm on Sunday, there was a disconnect. Plows had started to come through late Saturday night and Sunday morning. People's cars were still on the street, meaning they got plowed in and had their cars surrounded by 3-4 feet of snow. Try driving out of that. It doesn't work.

I like to think that most people, especially in the Midwest, do their best to follow the rules and avoid run-ins with the law (although my career depends on an opposite conclusion.) If I had been one of those people whose car had been plowed in and had to spend an hour shoveling my car out of its winter prison just to avoid being towed, I would have felt a tremendous injustice. Trying to follow the rules and literally impeded from doing so by the City of Minneapolis from every angle. It's just not right.

More snow starts tomorrow. I hope the lessons of experience will prevent a similar problem this time around. On the other hand, in true Midwestern fashion, perhaps our leaders are just trying to build character via wintry ineptitude.