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For Minnesotans, 1st Snowstorm Is Just Another Day

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – With Minnesota snow, it's never a matter of if, but when.

"I think it's typical Minnesota. I was expecting it much sooner," St. Cloud resident Sunshine Yisrael said.

When the first snow finally fell across St. Cloud, high schooler Xander Haws thought he'd help out mom and dad by shoveling, quickly realizing it wouldn't be the type of snow day made for playing.

"Pretty windy, a lot of the branches were falling off the trees," Haws said.

Windy and slushy.

No stranger to the cold, Kenyatta Gaines from Illinois is spending his first Minnesota day driving in the snow. Is the weather worse here in Minnesota?

"Yeah," Gaines said.

"It hasn't been too bad actually. It's just the wind is really, really bad," Yisrael said.

Driving, shoveling or just being outside, Friday is the reminder everyone was waiting for.

"It is what it is," Yisrael said. "I'm kind of used to it. I actually call this place Minnesnowta."

Many kids in the area got out of school early or had the day off but quickly realized it wasn't the kind of day they'd want to spend playing outside thanks to the nasty wind.

"We got three kids, we just picked them up from school. They got out at 12:10 today," Bob Gruber said.

Stocking up with all the makings of a day spent hunkering down.

"We're putting them to work. We've got work to do at our house," Gruber said.

"I'm going to go help work on the house with my parents," said one of Gruber's sons.

"Varnishing and staining," another son said.

Chores wouldn't normally be their favorite way to spend a day off from school, but the wet, windy weather kept most people around St. Cloud trying to stay inside.

"It's a lot, it's cold too, it's windy and I ain't even from Minnesota," Gaines said.

The kind of day every Minnesotan, even the youngest, expects to see sooner or later.

"Windy, cold. It's fun and not that much fun," said one of Gruber's sons.

In the metro, that first snowfall of the year can be a bit of an adjustment, even before the first flakes fall.

"It's been fairly steady. Yesterday was pretty busy, this morning was good," Derrick Wood said.

At Cedar Small Engine, the juxtaposition of the changing season remains on display.

"Sometimes we'll keep them around but I think this year it's going to be a little heavier snow so we need the room for snow blowers," Wood said.

Even the city of Minneapolis isn't quite ready to let go of favorable fall temperatures.

"We're still out picking up leaves that fell behind us. We still have some of our road crews out doing pothole repair, things like that. There's some construction projects going," said Minneapolis Public Works Director Mike Kennedy.

This year's winter arrival is allowing us to ease into the snowy season, while leaving us thinking of the snow yet to come.

"We've got about half the fleet ready to go and we can turn on a dime and put plows on most of the rest of it if we have to," Kennedy said.

On a day like Friday, where it starts with rain, road crews typically will not put down de-icer because those chemicals would just wash away, so if you're on the road Friday night, take it slow.

The Minnesota State Patrol says there have been 93 crashes since 10 p.m. Thursday and 4:30 p.m. Friday. Thirteen of those crashes resulted in injuries, and one was fatal.

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