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Saturday, January 14, 2017

Icy road footage updates from the first half of 2016-2017 winter

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

It has been a very busy icy road season, which began for me in earnest on December 10 with a trip up to Bloomington, Illinois for light snow. I have been averaging one winter storm shoot/chase each week, most of which have fallen on my normal days off from my primary jobs - resulting in a month-long string of no free days at home (hence the lack of blog updates). The season has been very productive - I have captured more incident-in-progress footage than in any other single season in the past. Since I had to replace my primary video camera last October, all of this new footage has been captured in 4K. I'm uploading these videos in 4K on my Youtube channel, so if you have a capable TV, you can watch them in full 4K resolution straight from Youtube (click the gear icon and select 2160p from the resolution menu).

Here is a list of the events covered, along with a summary of the videos captured:

Normal, Illinois light snow - December 10, 2016

As a winter storm affected Chicago and northern Illinois, I chose to focus on the lighter snow events on the fringes of the storm in the central part of the state. I captured video of a car spinning out on an offramp from I-55 in Normal:

4K VIDEO: Normal, IL snow spinout

St. Louis light icing (major event) - December 16, 2016

I already posted a blog summary of this day, so I won't repeat too much here. This was the most significant event to impact the STL area so far this season. I captured 9 different incident-in-progress clips, including tractor-trailers jackknifing on I-44 downtown:

4K VIDEO: Spinouts in Wentzville, MO
4K VIDEO: Tractor-trailers jackknifing on ice in St. Louis
4K VIDEO: Mini-documentary summarizing the event

St. Louis snow event - January 5, 2017

This overnight/early morning snow event in the city resulted in a spinout captured on one of the dash cameras.

HD VIDEO: South County snow spinout

Birmingham, Alabama sleet/freezing rain (major event) - January 6-7, 2017

I made a 2-day trip to the deep South to cover the January 6-8 winter storm, always a major event when it happens in these areas. I captured a couple of interesting clips during this trip.

4K VIDEO: Icy road slides in Birmingham, Alabama

Peoria, IL morning freezing rain - January 12, 2017

A "day before the day" icing event affected central Illinois on Thursday the 12th, a day before the bigger ice storm. I drove up to Peoria for the pre-sunrise arrival of some freezing rain (including freezing rain thunderstorms), but did not capture any footage.