The calendar says we’re about to spring forward. The overnight storm says it’s never too late for a snow day.

On Tuesday, our yards were bare and brown and blah. By morning, central and southern Minnesota were swaddled in snow. An Ash Wednesday storm impressive enough to give Halloween ‘91 a run for its anecdotes.

It’s pretty. It’s plowable. It’s packable. It’s all going to melt. It’s the perfect storm.

Half a foot or more of heavy, soggy snow closed the schools and stalled city buses in the middle of morning rush hour. After a winter with more extreme cold than extreme snow, Minnesota looked like Minnesota again.

While some of us made the most of an unexpected snow day, others were just trying to make it through the snow.

Isaac Kaufman landed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in the middle of the night, in the middle of the storm, after a few days in Vegas at a getaway with friends.

A taxi driver gamely navigated the high winds and driving snow, inching closer and closer to Kaufman’s home in Edina. They almost made it.

“Once we had turned off of France Avenue and onto some of the residential streets, the taxi driver basically looked at the unplowed roads and said, ‘I’m going to get stuck. I can’t do this,” Kaufman said. “So I got out of the taxi and walked.”