Traill County Sheriff Mike Crocker said the snow was knee-deep in his driveway when he started cleaning it out. And there was more to come.

Crocker and others in the Mayville and Hillsboro areas reported about two feet of snow from the weekend storm. When the plows and shovels came out Monday, they were busy.

"The county's been out cleaning the roads, and it's drifting right back in as they go," Crocker said Monday afternoon.

"But the bright side is, it's the end of January," he said. "We're closer to the end (of winter) than the beginning."

Jarrod Ree, who works at Mayport Polaris, a business that sells snowmobiles and other vehicles in Mayville, said it took him 10 minutes just to get in the door Monday. Snowplows were all over town, he said.

While the snow will encourage customers, Ree said, "They've got to get out of their yard before they think about snowmobiles."

The heavy snow forced authorities to close Interstate 29 from Fargo to Grand Forks on Sunday night. It reopened at 8 a.m. Monday with a major traffic backup at hotels and truck stops in Fargo.

Michelle Martens, the field desk manager at the Stamart truck stop along Interstate 29, estimated more than 250 trucks were parked there overnight, waiting for the interstate to reopen.

"It was amazing to see that many trucks in that one area," Martens said Monday morning. "They were parked everywhere - everywhere they could find a spot. To see them leaving (after the interstate reopened), it was just truck to truck to truck."

Dozens of schools in Grand Forks and Traill counties were closed Monday.

The snow gave way to cold temperatures and strong winds in the western part of the state. A wind chill advisory was canceled when the winds died down Monday afternoon.

The state forecast called for lows from 10 below zero to 20 below Monday night, with highs Tuesday ranging only from 5 below to 5 above.