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Well, at least it's not been for naught. It has been snowing and snowing and snowing in the Twin Cities today, but at least we can now say we've been through a record snowfall. You can tell your grandchildren that. The National Weather Service reports that as of 5:15 this afternoon, we broke the old record of 16.2 inches of snow for a 24-hour period. That old record was set during the famous Armistice Day blizzard of 1940.

Les Coleman of the National Weather Service is on the line now. And Mr. Coleman, can you tell us how much snow we've had so far?

LES COLEMAN: Well, so far, we've had over 16.2, which looks like a record for sure. And we're still getting a little snow for sure out here at the airport. We had kind of a little trough that moved through here today associated with the upper air disturbance, which really touched off a very intense rate of snowfall.

Also, that the main factor too, was the fact that we have real cold air at the surface, and we had a very strong southwesterly jet that streams out from Baja California, out through the Central Rockies, and curves eastward over Minnesota with very high winds, 80 to 100 knots. Well, when you get a pattern like that, that's what brings the storms out of the southwest.

And especially with such cold air at the surface, when you overrun that with a real warm air aloft, you can get very intense precipitation. In the wintertime, of course, you get heavy snow. Snowfall here at the airport at times was over 2 inches an hour, about 2.7 inches an hour. And also in the summertime, if this hadn't been snow and been warmer, we would have had heavy rains or possibly tornadoes.

So all we do is just change the temperature a little bit. But luckily, of course, the temperatures are not that cold as we had here a few days ago, luckily. But this time, we traded the temperatures for a heavy snowfall. But right now, this snow will taper off this evening, but it will still be very critical though, because we'll still have enough snow falling.

And the fact is that the roads are not in very good shape over the city and even the surrounding areas, and through Southern Minnesota, where there's heavy snowfall took place. And the worst thing about it is all these cars shouldn't be on the road, but they are. And they drive over in this here snow, which will make it glaze.

In fact, there's a glazing effect probably taking place out there now so that people, if they're driving unusually fast where they can't control the car, they can skid right off the ditch and a bad accident. So this condition tonight will exist all night.

And then tomorrow, well, the chances for the snow is not very high. But then we do have a winter storm watch that's posted for tomorrow night and Friday. And this looks like it could be another very good storm. The storm will be moving out of Nebraska area, it looks like, and moving northeastward towards the Great Lakes, possibly Chicago or the southeastern corner of Wisconsin.

And it should be pulling a lot more moisture out of the south, probably out of the Gulf. So this could be just as wicked storm. It's what we had today, so that people should be making preparations for the storm, especially tomorrow night and on Friday so that we could get maybe some more, well, let's hope not, record snowfall.

But then, of course, we do have very cold air still poised to the north of us. So when all this activity ends, then we could still probably pull down some very cold Arctic air over the area. But right now, it still looks like a stormy period right through Friday and into Saturday and possibly into Sunday.

So this looks like with the jet stream configuration that we have right now, it's pretty hard for any real worthwhile warming to take place to change the pattern. So this pattern might exist during the winter up until spring. So therefore, we may be locked in so-called in the old ice box so up here in the north country.

SPEAKER: So we can look for a little tapering off in the snow tonight, but it could get fairly ugly again by tomorrow night and Friday. Is that right?

LES COLEMAN: Mm-hmm. But like I say, it will be very bad driving tonight because even the main roads are not very good shape. And secondary roads are-- some of them are almost impossible, The drifts are so high.

SPEAKER: OK. Thank you very much, Les Coleman, who is with the National Weather Service office in the Twin Cities. Well, of course, as Mr. Coleman noted, it has been a bad day on the roads. And traveler's advisories remain in effect for much of a large part of Southern Minnesota and virtually all of Wisconsin.

Reporter Nancy Fushan has been following the travel conditions. And Nancy, bring us up to date, if you will.

NANCY FUSHAN: Well, they are not good. As Les Coleman said, at about 3:30 today, the State Patrol estimated already there were as many as 300 accidents in the metro area. And the rush hour was extenuated because people got to go home a little early, and major employers were letting people go home early. So the rush hour is stretched out.

There are, as of about 15 minutes ago, still some bottlenecks. And they're caused by the conditions, not merely accidents and the ripple effect that accidents have. There's a jackknifed truck, for instance, blocking traffic on 35W southbound near county roads 42 and 13.

Sometimes just merely the amount of snow, the volume of snow is causing problems. I-94 at Snelling, and the State Patrol did not know at the time whether it was eastbound or westbound, seemed to have traffic down to one lane until they could get the snowplows there to get enough snow off so that they could open it up a bit.

Also, where there are large hills, some of the cars simply just aren't making it up the hills that's taking place, say, at Highway 110 and Dodd Road. A number of cars just seem to be getting up so far and coming down the incline. Basically, freeway speeds are estimated below 35 miles per hour. There is some visibility problem at this point.

The AAA is advising no unnecessary travel in the West Central parts of Minnesota, in the metro area, and portions of Southern Minnesota. However, down in the Rochester area, they didn't get as much snow, so travel conditions are a bit better there.

We should mention that there is a snow emergency in both cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Officially designated snow emergency routes will be plowed between 9:00 this evening and 8:00 tomorrow morning. So do not park there or you will get a sizable ticket. And on Thursday, North South streets, Friday East West streets in both cities will be plowed.

Now, if you know someone who's taking a bus this evening, you can expect them to arrive at their destination a bit late. Delays, according to the MTC, during this extended rush hour could be as much as one hour as traffic backs up. The MTC says that buses will be back on schedule pretty much later this evening.

The airport reporting pretty good conditions out there. They didn't close down. All of their runways were being regularly maintained throughout the afternoon. And officials say that most of the flights, arrivals, and departures are pretty much on time.

One other thing, if you pick up a phone tonight and you don't get a dial tone right away, do not despair. Wait about 35 to 40. It will reappear. Evidently, a lot of people are doing phone calls, and Northwestern bell tells us that when that happens, the system kind of gets overloaded. And you simply have to wait a bit longer to get through.

The calling volume is expected to remain strong throughout the evening. And they expect no unusual problems. This, by the way, is not the kind of snow that causes line problems like we had back in December. So from that standpoint, we lucked out. But you may have a bit of trouble getting a dial tone tonight.

SPEAKER: OK. Thanks very much, Reporter Nancy Fushan. Again, we have set a new record. The old record was 16.2 inches of snow. It is still snowing. We've gone beyond the old record . And it's supposed to taper off later. We'll just have to see, and we'll keep you posted.