GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — Snow is on the way, in a very big way
Snow will spread into southwest Minnesota by mid to late morning and reach the metro in the early afternoon (12-2p.m.). Snowfall rates will pick up pretty quickly with the heaviest snow (up to 1" per hour rates) in the Twin Cities from about 2:00-7:00 p.m. Winds will also pick up from the southeast at 15-25 mph. Heaviest snowfall totals look to be just west of the Twin Cities but really, much of MN and western WI will see amounts of 5 inches or more. In the Twin Cities 6 to 9 inches looks very likely. Snow will continue to fall Friday night, though not as heavily as this afternoon and evening. Snow will wrap up early Saturday but winds will continue to howl but out of the northwest at 15-30 mph, with gusts as high as 40 to 50 mph for some places. Those winds will cause blowing, drifting and blizzard conditions in southwest Minnesota.
A former Minnesota Teacher of the Year staged a protest at the College Football Playoff championship attended by President Donald Trump by taking a knee during the national anthem. Kelly Holstine was among top teachers from around the country attending Monday night's game at the Superdome in New Orleans. Holstine later tweeted that she was given a “platform to stand up for marginalized and oppressed people.” Holstine was an English teacher at a Shakopee alternative high school when she was named Minnesota's Teacher of the Year for 2018-19. She is no longer a public school teacher.
Some Minnesotans hate winter, while others... celebrate all things cold and frozen. Those from the second group will likely be among the thousands that will wander among the artful sculptures at Ice Castles at Long Lake Regional Park in New Brighton. The popular attraction opens this Friday, Jan. 17. Ice artisans worked around the clock through inconsistent, often warm weather to get the attraction ready for Friday’s grand opening. That work included shaping and hand-placing icicles to create the life-size fairytale playground. The result is an acre-sized interactive experience, which features ice-carved tunnels, fountains, slides, frozen thrones, and cascading towers of ice embedded with color-changing LED lights.
