Author: Doug

The City Hall in St. Cloud, MN was on lock-down this afternoon. Saint Cloud police Lt.. Jerry Edblad said police were searching the building after an employee spotted someone near an air duct opening with a blanket who ran from the building when they were spotted.

Lt. Edblad said about 80 people work in the building and were evacuated late Wednesday to the Saint Cloud Civic Center while police continued to search City Hall this afternoon. Saint Cloud police are currently looking for two suspects. One is a black male with a goatee, 20 to 30 years old with a slender build, about 6 feet tall and wearing a black hat or black hooded sweatshirt.

Mayor Dave Kleis said City Hall has been evacuated while police search the building for the second possible burglary suspect and will remain closed for the rest of the day.

The Mayor said there have been two break-ins at City Hall over both holiday weekends in which some equipment and food was taken. There are also two two safes in City Hall that were also unsuccessfully broken into.

Just after 3:30 p.m. this afternoon, Lt. Jerry Edblad said most of the search was completed off but officers were still using thermal imaging equipment in the basement to search the air ducts.

As Neva and I were driving home from a New Years Eve party when a few blocks from home, we found this wreck.  A Mini Van flipped over after hitting a snow bank and road barrier on Highway 23 or Division Street and just east of Cooper Avenue in Saint Cloud, MN after just after 1:30 a.m this morning.

One of the State Troopers on the scene said it was a DUI. Footage of Andy’s Towing flipping the Mini Van back on it’s wheels.

I made it in the winter war zone in western Minnesota before Interstate 94 was shut down and the area was closed off.

A powerful winter storm system is hitting West Central and Northern Minnesota with a blizzard on Thursday and moving into New Years Eve.

This storm system has shut down Interstate 94 in both directions from Jamestown, ND to Alexandria MN.

The roads were brutal as the MNDot plows were pulled off the roads in this area. The warm weather earlier in the day melted the snow pack and melt combined with rain caused a layer of glare ice on the roads surface on the interstate as well as the highway and side roads around Fergus Falls, MN. As the temperature dropped rapidly, the water froze and then combine in the heavy winds and snow, travel was almost impossible even with four wheel drive.

I was able to catch a rare clip of video with a Minnesota State Trooper spinning its wheels to try and get out of the very deep snow that he was stuck in.

I also shot various clips of cars stuck in the snow and blowing snow in high winds.

Driving over all the freaking snow drifts made if felt like doing 30 miles per hour over heavy chop in a boat.

Wow, another post saying I’m working on the site stuff…  Ok, I know it sounds like a broken record or for those of you of the digital age, a scratched CD…  Seriously I’m going back over all of my old chase photos and video and actually filling in the gaps to the chase blogs for stuff I never posted before.

Right now I’m up to August of 2006 and I noticed something strange and that was the fact that I did not shoot one news video or stock video package for that whole month.  I was busy working on the Current TV project for most of that month and did not do anything else.  I still thought it was strange that I did not shoot at least one news video.

Well, back to the site.  If you want to see some of the blog videos that I have been posting, check out the youtube channel, http://www.youtube.com/bnvn1

My goal is to get the site done so I can transfer stuff to a new server by the first week of the new year before I get nailed with about $500 and webhosting and server renew charges.

Hey, just an FYI while I update stuff, you can check out my latest posts and videos on my facebook fan page.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Doug-Kiesling-Photo-Video-Fan-Page/220869651698?v=wall

I uploaded a bunch of new stuff to my Youtube page http://www.youtube.com/bnvn1

Been really busy here, just need to get the new site upgrade finished in the next week. 

It’s about 5 years worth of blogs being transfered around so it is taking a little time to finish. 

I can’t wait to show off the new site, it will be done by the end of the year 🙂

Like a nightmare that wont end, the Minneapolis, MN area is getting hit again with another half foot of snow during the overnight hours going into Christmas Eve.

For the third time in less than ten days, central Minnesota has been hit hard with another winter storm that crippled the roads during the afternoon rush hour on Monday.

The Minnesota State Patrol reported dozens of vehicles had spun out and ended up in the ditch and numerous crashes around the metro and along the Interstate 94 corridor to St. Cloud, MN.

In the video it shows poor driving conditions along interstate 94 and into the metro area where several cars were off to the side of the interstate after crashing.

At the height of the rush hour, traffic along Cedar Avenue in Richfield, next to the Minneapolis – St. Paul International Airport was at a crawl with travel times take up to forty five minutes to an hour just to drive ten miles to cross the Minnesota River.

Also in the video are various clips of snow plows and snow clean up at night and airplanes taking off and landing at the airport Additional clips of airplanes being deiced.

For the third time in less than ten days, central Minnesota has been hit hard with another winter storm that crippled the roads during the afternoon rush hour on Monday.

The Minnesota State Patrol reported dozens of vehicles had spun out and ended up in the ditch and numerous crashes around the metro and along the Interstate 94 corridor to St. Cloud, MN.

In the video it shows poor driving conditions along interstate 94 and into the metro area where several cars were off to the side of the interstate after crashing.

At the height of the rush hour, traffic along Cedar Avenue in Richfield, next to the Minneapolis – St. Paul International Airport was at a crawl with travel times take up to forty five minutes to an hour just to drive ten miles to cross the Minnesota River.

Also in the video are various clips of snow plows and snow clean up at night and airplanes taking off and landing at the airport Additional clips of airplanes being deiced.

Take a break for the night

Ok 10 hours of reviewing content is my limit even when it comes to reviewing this page. Ok so it’s not THIS page but it is the new version of the Weather Paparazzi website that I have hosted on an old account that nobody knows about for the time being under an obscure domain name.

What I have to do and what I’ll be doing for the next week, in between snow storms, is reviewing the old blogs to update video links and photo gallery stuff.

When the new site comes on line, all the old WMV files on this site will be gone and everything will be hosted on YouTube and SmugMug.

Speaking of YouTube, I uploaded my 1500th video today.  It’s a video that I didn’t even make into a stock video catalog and was hidden away on the website in the June 2005 blogs.

I was coming home from a chase bust when I was almost run off the road by a drunk driver.  I followed the car until the State Patrol could meet up with me to keep following the driver and pull them over.

Oh and the new site CMS setup will have the YouTube Embed feature so no more links like above but actual embed video.

Been going over a ton of SQL database code here on the new website.  It’s a lot of work to transfer stuff while working on several major upgrades but things are coming along.  Hope to launch the new site by the first of the year.