UPDATE at 4:35 PM Central time: A snow emergency has been declared in Minneapolis. Yep, things are going to continue to degrade. Continue staying safe out there, folks!
It's a little less than four hours before kickoff at TCF Bank Stadium between the Chicago Bears and the Minnesota Vikings for Monday night football. If you're going to the game and you're reading this. . .well, let's just say that it might be in your best interests to start trundling in the direction of the stadium as early as you possibly can.
From all accounts, the roads in Minneapolis range anywhere from "slow going" to "a parking lot" at this point. Intrepid weather correspondent/SB Nation Minnesota hockey expert Bryan Reynolds reported this via the magic of Twitter at approximately 3:30 PM Central time.
Let me rephrase. The entire Twin Cities area is a parking lot.
Bryan Reynolds
ReynoldsSBN
The "parking lot" had been reserved for just St. Paul in an earlier tweet, but has apparently been extended to include the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area.
The reason that someone has, apparently, paved paradise and put up a parking lot? Well, because it's snowing like heck in the Twin Cities right now. According to our good friends at Accuweather, it's currently 20 degrees with snow and freezing fog in Minneapolis, with winds coming from the east-southeast at 15 miles per hour, making it feel as though the temperatures are closer to about three degrees above zero.
It's only going to get colder as the evening progresses. By the time we reach kickoff, the temperatures will have dropped a couple of degrees and the winds will have increased a bit, giving us a "Real Feel" of exactly zero degrees Fahrenheit. The Twin Cities are also under a winter storm warning until 6:00 AM tomorrow, and the snow is not going to stop any time soon.
We here at SB Nation Minnesota want to see as big a crowd out there tonight for the game as possible, but please be safe in getting there and getting home. Not everybody drives with anything even resembling common sense, so keep vigilant on the roads of Minneapolis, St. Paul, or whichever suburb it is that you might be coming from this evening. And, for crying out loud, keep warm out there tonight as well by whatever means you have available.