When the sun rose over Minneapolis on Dec. 12, 2010, something was missing from the city’s skyline: the white Teflon bubble of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.
A weekend blizzard had dumped a whopping 17 inches of snow on the dome faster than the short-staffed facilities crew could hose off its 10 acres of surface area with hot water.
The roof buckled overnight before finally bursting about 5 a.m., sending chunks of snow and ice tumbling onto the field below, where the Vikings were scheduled to kick off against the New York Giants just a few hours later.
“It’s like a 100-year flood,” a Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission official told the Pioneer Press at the time. “You do everything you can to melt the snow, but Mother Nature has tricks of her own.”
That day’s football game was hastily rescheduled for the following night at Ford Field in Detroit, while advocates for a new downtown Minneapolis stadium seized on the roof’s collapse as proof that the aging Metrodome was overdue for replacement.
Snow defenses overwhelmed
The dome had several lines of defense against Minnesota’s harsh winters.
When heavy snow fell, the internal air pressure of the stadium — which kept the roof aloft — was increased to keep the Teflon taut under the load. Meanwhile, 140-degree air was pumped into the space between the dome’s inner and outer layers.
When that didn’t do the trick, members of the maintenance staff climbed onto the roof in pairs with a firehose to attack the snow with 105-degree water.
The night before the collapse, road conditions prevented some of these staffers from making it to work, according to an interview with facilities crew member Pete Eisenschenk in a video the Vikings produced in 2020.
The pace of the snowfall soon overwhelmed the short-handed crew. When the center of the dome began to droop, the now-useless firehoses were abandoned. Gravity did the rest.
The Vikings lost their make-up game against the Bears on their way to a disappointing 6-10 record that season, but the campaign to build what became U.S. Bank Stadium was reinvigorated.
The proposal won the approval of the state Legislature in 2012.
Three collapses in three years
This was the fourth time a snowstorm had knocked the wind out of the Metrodome.
While it was still under construction in November 1981, a faulty roof panel was torn in half when the building’s internal pressure was increased to support the dome after it was blanketed by 10 inches of snow.
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The very next year, maintenance crews were shoveling snow off the dome after a December blizzard dumped 16.5 inches on the building, when a crane that was being used to haul it away snagged the roof and tore a hole in it.
“All were able to scurry off the roof before the dome deflated,” the St. Paul Dispatch reported. No one was injured.
During another snowstorm the following April, a chunk of ice slid down the side of the roof and pressed the fabric against a bolt at the dome’s base. The resulting tear was repaired in time for the Twins to play the California Angels the next evening.
