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Monday, February 11, 2008 - 5:15AM

Icy conditions tonight through Tuesday

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

From Dan: How the crime of copyright infringement took $1 million from me and brought down my business.

I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. This page is a detailed account of the biggest threat to my photography and video operation that I had to battle daily to just barely survive, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem facing all of my colleagues as well.

A potential for a significant icy road event exists on Monday and Tuesday, stretching from Oklahoma all the way to New York and Pennsylvania. An arctic cold front has brought frigid temperatures - in the single digits for some areas - all the way south of the Ohio Valley. As warm air and moisture returns northward overtop of that cold air, snow, sleet and freezing rain will begin falling across a broad swath from the Plains to the Northeast.

Since the ground will have had at least one full day of exposure to temperatures well below freezing, any frozen precipitation will have a good chance of quickly and efficiently sticking to the roads. In other words, for most areas it won't be a bridges-only hazard, it will be an all-roads hazard. This event will affect several major cities including Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Springfield, St. Louis, Evansville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Lexington, Columbus, Charleston, Clarksburg, Morgantown, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Albany and Philadelphia. Unfortunately I expect to see reports of hundreds and even thousands of accidents across the country before this ends on Wednesday morning.

Since Charleston will be included in this event, I will be staying here for the duration. The biggest hazard for us begins after midnight tonight.