GROUNDED

Hundreds of motorists were stopped cold in their tracks this past weekend as a blizzard swept across Steele County and much of southern Minnesota.
Sheriff Lon Thiele said more than 200 motorists have been rescued and placed in shelters at Trinity Lutheran Church and the National Guard Armory in Owatonna. He said most of those rescued were from Iowa and Nebraska trying to head southbound.
Gov. Tim Walz declared a state of emergency in order to mobilize the Minnesota National Guard and open armories as makeshift shelters. 
National Guard members assisted Sheriff Thiele and his deputies with rescuing numerous stranded motorists around the county. Thiele estimated that at least 50 motorists were rescued from all parts of the county.
“There were numerous vehicles from small cars to semis all over the county,” Thiele said. 
One of the more daring rescue efforts came Sunday afternoon when emergency workers rescued stuck motorists near the Steele-Waseca county line. They had become stuck Sunday morning and were not found until about 5 p.m. The rescuers utilized a small utility vehicle with tracks from the National Guard to get to them.
“We went through some enormous snow drifts to get to those people,” Thiele said. “They would have been stranded and frozen,” he said, adding one of the vehicles was almost empty of gasoline at the time the rescue was made.
The rescued motorists were brought back to the armory in Owatonna.
In another rescue, a father and small child were found stranded and brought to safety.
“We were fortunate to have no one injured,” Thiele said. He noted he has never seen rescue operations of this magnitude before in Steele County. 
Thiele said in some cases snow was piled up to the windows on the car and there was no way for anyone to get out of their vehicles. “We had to shovel the car doors so we could get people out,” he said. 
The sheriff also saw some instances where guard members gave stranded motorists their coats off their backs for those who were underdressed for the conditions.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed Interstate 35 late Saturday from Owatonna to the Iowa border. U.S. Highway 218 from Owatonna to Austin was also closed. In addition, MnDOT issued a no travel advisory on any highways throughout southeastern Minnesota for most of the weekend into Monday.  
“It’s just stunning,” said Michael Dougherty, spokesperson for MnDOT. “Some of the main roads look like a cow path behind an apple tree. It seems strange to think someone would get stuck in the middle of the highway.”
Of those vehicles that became stuck in the roadway, Dougherty said the motorists were rescued, but their vehicles could not be moved and remained right where they were left.
Contributing to the problem was that once motorists realized the interstate was closed, they got off and tried to his the county roads, according to Thiele. “They found themselves in worse conditions on the county roads,” he said. 
Highways were strewn with cars facing various directions and nowhere to go.
Dougherty said southeastern Minnesota was blasted with a trifecta of things to hit. First, heavy amounts of snow fell at rapid rates with up to a foot. Next came the heavy winds that created snow drifts as high as vehicles followed by plunging temperatures Sunday night into Monday. 
“It all combines to make challenging conditions,” Dougherty said. “We just don’t see snow events like this.”
Salt used to treat the roadways becomes ineffective when temperatures dip under 15 degrees, according to Dougherty. He said MnDOT was bringing in trucks from the Twin Cities metro area equipped with chemicals mixed with beet juice to help clear the roadways. 
MnDOT also deployed big mounted snow blowers, known as SnoGos, which are mounted on the front of snow plows, from the metro area because the regular plows are unable to handle the drifts, Dougherty said. 
“They just started carving into these big drifts,” Dougherty said Monday morning. “They are punching through trying to get one lane open,” he said, adding they will move onto other areas and then go back to clean up the rest of the roadway. 
During the height of the blizzard, MnDOT ran snow plows in tandem, Dougherty said. “They were told to stay at a safe distance with two trucks at a time,” he said. “With two trucks tied up, our resources were not as effective, but safety has to prevail.”
In some cases, MnDOT provided plows to make emergency escorts for area ambulances needing to get patients to hospitals. 
On the side roads around Steele County, snow removal efforts were severely impeded because of all the stranded vehicles, according to Scott Golberg, county administrator. “With the stranded vehicle on the county roads, we had to work around them,” he said. 
Besides the motorists stranded in Owatonna, there were also some who sought shelter in Ellendale, Golberg said. 
The uniqueness of this massive blizzard, Golberg said, was the drifting, which caused all the stranded motorists.