Star Tribune
Nearly all of Minnesota under winter weather warning or advisory as storm moves in
Winter weather watches and warnings covered just about every Minnesota county on Tuesday as a potent storm moved across the state, bringing snow, rain, sleet, ice and strong winds that were expected to last through Saturday.
“Just about everybody in the state will be impacted in some way, shape or form over the next few days,” said Brent Hewett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen.
Dozens of schools across west-central Minnesota — where winter storm warnings for 3 to 6 inches of snow were in effect through early and midday Wednesday — delayed starts, closed early, or closed altogether Tuesday. In southwestern Minnesota, freezing rain combined with winds gusting up to 50 mph triggered an ice storm warning through noon, Hewett said.
More schools plan to be closed Wednesday, when some places could see as much as a half-inch of ice, Hewett said.
“That’s a nasty type of precipitation,” he said. “Don’t travel if you don’t need to.”
In northeastern Minnesota, the wintry weather is expected to be more severe. Duluth and the North Shore are under a blizzard warning until 6 p.m. Thursday. That includes 16 to 30 inches of new snow accumulation and a “light glaze” of ice, according to the warning.
Other parts of northern Minnesota are forecast to get 6 to 7 inches of snow through 6 p.m. Wednesday as part of the winter storm warning.
The initial wave of precipitation moved into Minnesota on Tuesday morning but reached the Twin Cities only about lunchtime. Most was expected in the form of rain, with some freezing rain, sleet and snow possible. A winter weather advisory was in effect through early Wednesday for the metro and south-central Minnesota, with the possibility of 1 inch to 3 inches of accumulated snow, the Weather Service said.
The weather advisory also covered cities such as Albert Lea and Mankato and the Wisconsin cities of Eau Claire and Hayward, according to the Weather Service.
Heavy, wet snow was expected across the northern half of the state later Tuesday, with the greatest chance for 3 to 5 inches of snow from Alexandria to Mora and farther north, the Weather Service said. By late afternoon on Tuesday, there had yet to be any snowfall in the state.
“The expected amounts have dropped a little bit,” meteorologist Tyler Hasenstein said.
Through Tuesday afternoon the closest area that received substantial snowfall was in southeast North Dakota, Hasenstein said.
Farther north near Duluth could see closer to 8 inches or more of snow overnight into Wednesday. The central and northern parts of Minnesota were expected to see a transition to snowy conditions Tuesday night into Wednesday, Hasenstein said.
“Duluth is looking like it’s going to get hit pretty hard with snow overnight,” Hasenstein said.
The amount of freezing rain also ended up being less than expected through early afternoon Tuesday, according to the NWS.
A massive low-pressure system over the central part of the United States will inch its way east, delivering a one-two punch. On Wednesday, the state will see a bit of a lull as the first system stalls out, but more precipitation will come Thursday and continue through the first part of the weekend.
Rain will wash away much of the snow covering the ground in southern Minnesota and the Twin Cities, but that was expected to be replaced with a new coating of 3 to 6 inches that will fall from Thursday through Saturday morning.
A system that triggers watches and warnings touching nearly all of Minnesota’s 87 counties is a rare occurrence — something that usually happens once or twice a year.
“This is an impressive system,” Hewett said. “It’s going to be an active week.”
Star Tribune
Celebrity chef Justin Sutherland gets two years of probation for threatening girlfriend
According to the criminal complaint:
Police were twice called on June 28 to an apartment in the 800 block of Front Avenue. During the first call, a woman told officers that everything was fine despite previously reporting that Sutherland had choked her and tried kicking her out of the apartment.
During the second call about 90 minutes later, the woman told police that Sutherland had briefly squeezed her neck with both hands, said “I want you dead,” pointed a gun at her and hit her in the chest with it, and at one point said he would shoot her if she came back after running off. Officers then arrested Sutherland.
Staff writers Paul Walsh and Alex Chhith contributed to this story.
Operators of the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) have agreed to consolidate housing units, create a new programming schedule and retrain correctional officers in an effort to satisfy state regulators, who rebuked the downtown facility last month for violating resident rights.
Changes come in the wake of a scathing inspection report that accused the center of placing minors in seclusion without good reason to compensate for ongoing staff shortages. An annual audit by the Department of Corrections found that teens were frequently locked in their rooms for long stretches, due to a lack of personnel rather than bad behavior.
In response, county officials vowed to bolster staffing and retrain all officers tasked with performing wellness checks. Last week, the facility closed its “orientation mod,” typically reserved for new admissions, and combined male age groups to reduce the number of living units and provide heightened supervision.
The moves, including a new schedule, are expected to help prevent the undue cancellation of recreation, parent visits and other privileges to children in their custody.
“[Previous] staffing levels did not allow for all units to run programming simultaneously while having sufficient staff available to respond to incidents and emergencies in the building,” JDC Superintendent Dana Swayze wrote in a seven-page letter to state inspectors. “Programming is only cancelled on an as-needed basis based on the JDC’s ability to safely accommodate [it].”
In a Dec. 4 email to the County Board, Mary Ellen Heng, acting director of Hennepin’s Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation, assured elected officials that they had begun taking corrective actions but asserted that some of the report’s findings lacked context.
Heng pointed to a violation where teens were allegedly confined without cause, even when multiple correctional officers were sitting in a nearby office. She explained that, during the dates of the inspection earlier this fall, several officers observed in the office were still in training — and therefore not permitted to interact with the youths alone.
She also contended that while programming has been modified by staffing limitations, “this additional room time is not reflective of punishment, disciplinary techniques, or restrictive procedures.”
Tired of surging gun violence across St. Paul, community leaders and police are asking residents to help create a safer city.
The call for community support came Thursday night when officials from the St. Paul NAACP, St. Paul Police Department, Black Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the African American Leadership Council gathered at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church to talk about ways to decrease gun violence in the city.
St. Paul has recorded 30 homicides so far this year according to a Star Tribune database, two fewer than last year. But four of this year’s homicides happened in the same week, frustrating law enforcement and alarming residents.
St. Paul NAACP President Richard Pittman Sr. said that solutions to gun violence are “right here, in the room.” But without the community’s help, Pittman said their efforts could fall short.
“Over the last several weeks and months, we have experienced an uptick in violent crimes in our communities. [That’s] turned on a light bulb that it’s time [to] not have the police feeling like all the pressure is on them,” Pittman said. “Nobody wants to the responsibility of having to shoot someone down in the street. Nobody wants the responsibility of hurting somebody’s family. We all want the best outcome.”
Attendee Carrie Johnson worried generational trauma is derailing youth’s behavior, adding that she’s seen boys in middle school punch girls in the face. Migdalia Baez said mothers living along Rice Street feel they have nowhere to turn for help in redirecting their children. Some worry that their child would be incarcerated if they ask for help.
Larry McPherson, a violence interrupter for 21 Days of Peace St. Paul, said some issues stem from youth with no guidance. McPherson and others patrol hot spots for crime across the city, including near the Midway neighborhood’s Kimball Court apartments where fentanyl drove a spike in robberies and drug violations.
“We’ve got a lot of mental health [struggles]. We’ve got a lot of doggone drug addiction that’s going on in our neighborhoods. We all got the best interests at hand for all people in our community, but we’re just not working fast enough,” McPherson said. “Until we get feet on the ground, people coming out of their own community and standing up for this real cause to take back the community, we’re going to have the same outcome.”
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