Author: Doug

The Minneapolis and Saint Paul metro region was hit hard with a record breaking amount of snow on Saturday. The cities just south and east of the metro area received 18 inches to 21.5 inches of snow.

This video was shot in the southern Minneapolis, MN metro area from the Burnsville, MN area which is just south of the Minnesota River to the area around the Minneapolis International Airport and Mall of America in Bloomington and into Minneapolis itself.

The snow caused hundreds of cars in the metro area to spin out and become stuck in the snow along several serious crashes with injuries. Driving was near impossible without a four wheel drive truck and even with a 4×4 truck, it was extremely difficult and dangerous to try and navigate the roadways.

Heavy snow and high winds caused the Minneapolis – St. Paul International airport to shut down for a few hours until one of the four runways was able to be opened up for limited use operations.

Delta Airlines, which runs about eighty percent of the airports traffic out of MSP had to cancel virtually all of its flights into and out of Minneapolis Saturday afternoon and evening.

This major winter storm system stranded everyone. The New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings football game which was scheduled for Sunday 12/12/2010, had to be rescheduled for Monday night due to the fact that the New York Giants football team could not fly into Minneapolis due to the blizzard.

In the video there are several clips of people stuck in the snow after losing control of their vehicles, snow plows trying to clear the roads and footage from Minneapolis International Airport of the heavy snow and travelers reading the signs showing all the flights that were canceled.

After the blizzard, extreme cold temperature’s and dangerous wind chills are moving into the region.

If you want a good laugh, check out the new EXTREME video were I joke around with Extreme Cooking. Yes, I joke around with the word EXTREME since everything now is EXTREME…

Warning, don’t try this at home. If you burn your house down, don’t blame me.
*** THERE IS NO METAL IN THE JALAPENO PEPPER ***

While cooking dinner and needing to thaw out a frozen Jalapeno in the microwave, I found that some of them will get really hot, and will actually spark like metal in a microwave.

*** THERE IS NO METAL IN THE JALAPENO PEPPER ***
The microwaves cook with waves of energy that excite the water
molecules in your food which cause your food to cook.

In just the right size frozen foods, such as a frozen Jalapeno,
the microwave will an create electrical charge in the food that
could spark.

This is really a fire in the microwave, so don’t try this at home.

To license this footage, contact http://www.stormchasingvideo.com
*** THERE IS NO METAL IN THE JALAPENO PEPPER ***

Video of the day, with the cold weather taking hold of the nation, I thought I would post some warm weather footage. Here is a video from Loggerhead Key, out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. The footage is pretty rare since I was allowed to climb up to the top of the light house that is normally off limits. Heck the whole island is normally off limits unless you pretty much wade on shore.

Freezing rain, mist and drizzle put down a slick coat of ice over the roads of central and southern Minnesota today. The ice caused hundreds of crashes causing serious injuries including two fatal accidents.

The footage I shot of the slick road condition was from the Saint Cloud and Sauk Centre area of Minnesota.

The first part of the footage shows slick roads in Saint Cloud, MN where cars were having a hard time dealing with the ice covered roads.

The second half of the footage was from Sauk Centre where a Semi Truck rolled over after trying to avoid a van that spun out and lost control in front of the Semi.

When the Semi crashed, the cargo of frozen fish broke through the top of the trailer and spilled out onto the side of Interstate 94. The remaining cargo in the trailer had to be removed by the tow truck crews prior to being able to lift the rig back onto it’s wheels.

I know I have been talking about a major overhaul to the site.  Well, here is a peak at what is to come.
http://weatherpaparazzi.smugmug.com/

I’m in the middle of redoing the while page, gallery, layout and even sales.

By Monday, if not the end of the day today, I will have all the images for sale up and running on SmugMug.

Then I will be retooling this site over the next few days and launching the new site by the end of the month.

So if you have ever wanted to buy some of my images, now you can via the new smug mug setup.

I know is sounds like a broken record but seriously, I’m working on a TON of stuff behind the scenes that is taking a lot longer and is a ton of work.  The YouTube change over is well underway with almost 1500 videos on the BNVN Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/bnvn1 

Also working on the new photo gallery for this page and the whole overhaul of this page.  It’s a ton of work but its all coming together and hope to have it completed in the next week.

What else is happening?  Getting back into flying and just passed my First Class Medical exam this week.  Now I just need to refresh on regs and get the Bi-Annual flight review taken care of and then keep the flying current. 

Well I better get back to work on the huge stack of stuff.  Hoping to get the new BNVN site up and running as well as the new BNVN site by the end of the month.

Still working on the YouTube swap out and some other exciting new stock photo and stock video stuff for my personal page as well as for the BNVN page. 

Just uploaded another new video to YouTube of some stock hail footage that Tony shot this year.

This footage is pretty insane.  If you want to see a wide range of insane hail, check out this footage.

Lot’s of cool updates finally able to announce. I’m in the process of doing the updates and transfers but I have been moving all the BNVN footage to our new YouTube Director Partner channel. I’m still working on the transfer of descriptions but right now the BNVN1 YouTube channel has over 1400 videos on the channel. Yes, I said over ONE THOUSAND and FOUR HUNDRED videos on YouTube.

I also uploaded the Katrina Project that Chris and I put together. This was going to be used as a B-Side project for a hurricane project for last year or this year but nothing happened here in the USA. So if you want to watch the DVD project on-line, check it out below.

Right now I’m working on the new photo gallery setup and the new video gallery setup for BNVN and for my personal site here. As soon as I get all the stuff behind the scenes edited together and put together, I’ll be launching the new sites in the coming weeks. So stay tuned, were launching a ton of new stuff that is going to rock.

As the project comes down to the wire, I’m doing some mad crazy editing to get it finished up by Tuesday.

Tonight’s project, Fit 3 hours and 49 minutes of video in to 35 minutes of space and make one hell of a story.
If anyone wants to see the project rough edits, let me know and I will send you the link. This is a limited editing proofing thing to get feedback on the project from you the viewer.

Hurricane Igor has weakened to a Category One storm but the large waves that were generated when Igor was a very strong Category Four Hurricane are hitting the eastern side of Bermuda this afternoon as what is left of the center of circulation is passing off to the southwest.

BNVN Weather Paparazzi Chris Collura just shot this amazing footage from the Eastern tip of Bermuda in Tobacco Bay of huge waves slamming into and even up and over the coast line and a roadway.

The footage shows large debris flying up in the air as the waves slam into the coast line near the roadway.

Chris is back out shooting more footage and will have another video uploaded if possible later this evening if the power remains on in his area of the island.