If you learned one system and then moved across the river, you will get a ticket. The two cities share a metro, a snowfall total and a border, and almost nothing about how they clear streets.
Minneapolis has no fixed snowfall threshold. The Director of Public Works declares an emergency by ordinance, weighing what has already accumulated, what is falling, the timing, the street conditions, the forecast and the time of year. The city’s own published example is worth quoting because it explains the apparent inconsistency people complain about: a three-and-a-half-inch snowfall in January on top of earlier buildup may warrant an emergency, while six inches in March with warm weather right behind it may not.
The parkway rule on Day 2 is the one that catches residents, including long-time ones. Minneapolis parkways are Park Board roads and sit outside the ordinary even and odd cycle: both sides are off limits, not just the even side.
A tow to the impound lot at 50 Van White Memorial Boulevard is $222 for a standard vehicle, plus $18 a day in storage and a $6 notification letter. Heavy-duty tows start at $224.50 with winch time billed at $124.50 per half hour. Roughly 80 tow trucks remove an average of 1,100 vehicles per snow emergency, so this is a routine outcome rather than an unlucky one.
Notification is better than most people realize: text MPLSAlerts to 77295, call the snow hotline at 612-348-SNOW (available in English, Spanish, Somali and Hmong), or use the city’s snow app.
Saint Paul does not use an even and odd system. It uses two route types, and the mental model is completely different.
The day the emergency is declared. These streets are signed. Typically both sides of arterials, all of downtown, and one side of north-south residential streets.
No posted signs at all. Everything not signed as a night route: typically both sides of east-west residential streets and one side of north-south residential streets. No parking until the street is plowed to the curb.
Saint Paul typically declares after snowfalls of three inches or more, and a declaration runs 96 hours including cleanup. Vehicles in unplowed areas stay subject to citation and towing for that whole window.
A parking ticket is $56. Towing and impound is $246 if the vehicle is collected before midnight on the day of the tow — $143.89 towing, $80 administration and $22.11 sales tax — then $15 a day in storage. The impound lot is at 1129 Cathlin Street.
⚠️ You will still find the figure $331 repeated on news pages and competitor sites. It comes from a 2019 council vote and has been superseded by the city’s own current published fees. Same-day total today is $302.
In a single event on November 30, 2025, Saint Paul issued 1,385 tickets and towed 351 vehicles — noticeably more than Minneapolis the same day. The unsigned day route is the likeliest explanation.
Outside the two core cities the question is not “is a snow emergency declared” but “what depth starts the plows, and when can I not park.” Every one of these is different.
Maple Grove is deliberately absent from this table. Its rules were not verifiable from published sources at the time of writing, and a wrong parking rule is worse than a missing one. Check the city directly.
Snow emergencies are when routes get tested. Seasonal customers are the route; everyone else is after it.
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