Staff Writers

As the inches of snow add up to feet, students have had to deal with the inconveniences of a harsh winter. Some of the costliest of these winter burdens are snow emergency car towings.

A snow emergency is declared when St. Paul receives three inches of snowfall or when three inches of snow accumulate over several days.

After the alert is issued, cars must be moved off of the plow routes or they will be towed. Cars on day plow routes must be moved by 8 a.m. Cars on night plow routes must be off the roads by 9 p.m.

Macalester students can move their cars to on-campus parking lots during snow emergencies. However, Macalester students have had many run-ins with snow emergency protocol.

Cara Harwood ’06 had her car towed during a snow emergency at the end of January. Her car had been parked on the service road on Summit Avenue in front of Wallace.

“I came back to my room after class, looked out the window and saw it there,” Harwood said. “Then I looked out the window again an hour later and it was gone.”

After reclaiming her car from the impound lot, Harwood signed up for the snow emergency notification e-mail.

Harwood said she especially likes the e-mail system because she rarely watches the news or listens to the radio to know when a snow emergency has been declared. “The school isn’t always the best about telling us,” she said.

Randy Overbeek ’05 said that he was aware that a snow emergency had been declared on the evening of Dec. 15, but he was not sure of the exact procedures or duration of the snow emergency.

He left his house on the morning of Dec. 16 and discovered that his car was gone. “Usually I would refuse to walk anywhere—especially in this case, because it was really cold out and school is kind of far away,” Overbeek said. “However, I realized that if I didn’t go to my final, I’d have no chance of graduating on time, so I had to walk.”

Overbeek said that after his classes, he took a cab to the impound lot he found listed on the snow emergency web site. There, he waited thirty minutes in line before discovering that because the title of the car was in his father’s name, the car could not be immediately released to him.

The impound lot staff told him that they needed a notarized copy of a statement from Overbeek’s father giving them permission to release the car to Overbeek. “Luckily, my dad was able to fax me the statement right away,” Overbeek said.

According to Overbeek, the towing was $132.40 and the ticket from the City of St. Paul was $40.00, costing him a total of $182.40.

Since then, Overbeek said that he has devised a strategy for avoiding further towings. “When a snow emergency is declared, I deliberately stay out until about 5:00 a.m.,” he said. “When I come home, I park on the night plow route, which has already been plowed. This has worked out quite well for me so far.”

Car owners can find more information about snow emergencies and subscribe to the city of St. Paul’s e-mail notification system by visiting www.ci.stpaul.mn.us/depts/

publicworks/snowplow.html.