MSP closed due to snow - glad I switched flights
 

So Sunday I saw that MSP was lined up for a major snow storm on Monday and a Weather Waiver issued. Since I usually do not have to worry about them and travelling with an FO, and we were booked PSC-SEA-MSP-SAT, I was not sure if there would be a fare difference charged, I postponed doing anything about it till Monday. Got to SEA and our flight to MSP was delayed over an hour (but still a long connection) so I called the Diamond Line and they rebooked us through SLC for free arriving in SAT 3 hours later. The SEA-MSP flight got diverted to MCI and our MSP-SAT flight got cancelled. My expectation is that if we stayed on the MSP flight, we would have been stuck in MSP for who knows how many days without a hotel due to everyone else booking them first. Overall, looks like I made a good call.

It's bad out here: More than 350 flights have been cancelled at MSP and average delays are reported to be about six hours.The two main runways have been closed for most of the delay and the alternate "crosswind" runways must be closed for plowing every half hour or so. Road travel isn't advised to the southwestern part of the state, starting not much more than ten miles from the airport.

OTOH, if you had been stranded here, the airport does have a big supply of cots and blankets to bring out and SCs have been known to stay open for delayed flights.

I wonder if the waiver will be extended to tomorrow. It's an absolute mess out here and the snow is not stopping anytime soon.

Wow you know it's a bad storm when MSP closes all the runways. Paging Joe Patroni.

AFAIK the airport isn't closed, nor are all runways closed. The situation is that they're forced to use the alternative crosswinds runways, which have lower capacity, Moreover, each one must be closed for plowing about every half hour (probably until late this evening, although there was some hope of being able to switch to the main runways around 7 this evening), so that there's only one runway to use most of the time. Hence the delays and cancellations.

Wow....can not wait to hear from several members of this forum how well MSP handles 3 inches of snow...

from Twitter,

Due to worsening weather conditions and resulting runway closures at MSP, 425 mainline and Delta Connection regional flights have been cancelled Monday. Conditions are expected to improve tomorrow as the storm passes.

Twitter update:

The Minneapolis-St.Paul International airport has halted all arrivals this evening due to weather conditions at the airport. Departures for remaining flights from @MSPairport will start at 7 p.m. CT, pending an assessment of the facilities.

Well neither FR24 nor PlaneFinder are showing any flights inbound or outbound, so I believe that MSP is closed!

A flight to MSP diverted to Grand Forks and TATLK arrivals are being sent to DTW.

BTW, a Sun Country flight (IIRC from Florida) diverted to St Cloud. I hadn't realized that STC could handle mainline aircraft.

flightaware is showing SCX588 inbound from CUN.

Yes I just saw that after my last post! And it just landed there! I wonder why nothing else is operating then?

I rebooked this morning for a noon flight tomorrow. I was originally scheduled to fly out at 5:59 today for SFO. The inbound from ATL was finally canceled and the new inbound aircraft apparently arrived from LAX over a week ago.

MSP has received 9.3 inches of snow as of 6 PM local time, so I can't tell if this whole "three inches" thing is sarcasm.

I'm about 20 miles SE of MSP and I've gotten well over a foot of snow so far and it's still coming down heavy.