Mr. Walsh - Perhaps you could write a follow up on this brief piece as to why the roads are so icy. I'm new to the area, but assumed resources were in place to salt/grit roads to prevent the sort of fiasco pictured in your piece. I live in Uptown, and can confirm similar road conditions exist at Hennepin and Lake as of 0930 today. To whom do I address my concerns? LS

Those articulated buses have absolutely NO traction and were a HUGE mistake for Minnesota. From an old bus rider who spent more time on artics than I care to think about.

The novices (non-locals) were out in full force today. Looked like people had never seen snow before. Can't wait until we get a measly 3", it will take 2 hours to get to work. Note to people who didn't grow up in Minnesota and therefore cannot drive in winter conditions: Take the trains we're all forced to pay for!

londonstud - The roads are icy because the temperature dropped below 32 degrees Farenheit (that's 0 Celsius for you Londoners). Combine the temperature below freezing with some precipitation falling from the sky, when it gets packed from cars and the condensation from exhaust pipes of cars gets re-melted and re-froze, it turns to ice. Get used to it, it will be around until next March.

This was nothing. Cities are not going to waste salt on this little snow. Wait till we have 10" then we might thing about bringing the plows out.

First of the season so the roads have not yet been sanded/salted. Once they have a base it will be better, but watch bridge decks all winter long. They are the first to slick up.

The cities should have been better prepared. Some roads were sheets of ice. You cannot drive on that. This has nothing to do with locals vs nonlocals.

@londonstud... you'll find over time that no matter how much salt they put down there are quite a few people here who are just terrible drivers. When you have a combination of people driving way slower than they need to and people driving way faster than they should be, chaos always ensues. You'll soon encounter the truck or SUV driver who mistakenly believes that just because he's got a big vehicle with 4WD and can accelerate faster that he can also slow down faster. So he'll tailgate you and whip around you, making you even more nervous and taking your eyes off the road. If people would just go with the flow and take turns out there it wouldn't be so bad. You'll experience "Minnesota Nice" in a few places while you're here, but I guarantee you'll never experience it on our roads and highways.

goldbricker -- Can't speak for other areas, but downtown St. Paul was a complete disaster this morning. People were driving slow, very defensively, and you were still sliding down hills into Lowertown with ZERO chance of stopping. As a veteran driver of 25+ MN winters -- even I bounced off someones bumper trying to navigate the hill between Wabasha and Minnesota St on 5th downtown. I was going 5MPH and on the breaks at the top of the hill, and just slid down... nothing could be done. St Paul should have had some public works trucks out hitting the really big problem areas. What a mess!

Drove from Cottage Grove to Golden Valley this morning. 2 1/2 hours...