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Shipping Season Begins On The Upper Mississippi

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Another sign of our early spring? The opening of the navigation season on the Upper Mississippi River.

Commercial shipping officially began with the arrival of the first towboat in the Twin Cities this weekend.

"The first tow made it up here on St Patrick's Day -- made it to St. Paul about 6 or 7 p.m. in the evening," said Shannon Bauer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

NewsRadio 830 WCCO's Steve Murphy Reports

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That towboat, the Deana Ann of Paducah, Kentucky, crunched through 10 inches of ice on Lake Pepin near Red Wing before pushing its seven barges into St. Paul.

The average opening date for the past 30 years has been March 20. The earliest arrival ever has been March 4 and latest April 7.

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