Intense snow and winds right around rush hour caused a lot of crashes in Michigan and surrounding areas on Jan. 12, and that was just the beginning of the snow for some people by the Great Lakes.
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00:00 We are continuing to monitor conditions across the Midwest as a major winter storm has dumped snow and caused blizzard conditions for some, making travel very dangerous.
00:07 So storm chaser Aaron Rigsby joins us now from Ann Arbor, Michigan with what he is seeing there, home of the Wolverines.
00:14 They got their national championship earlier in the week and now we got some wind and some snow.
00:19 So Aaron, what have you been observing out there and how are the roads?
00:24 Yes, good evening Jeff. The traffic has died down a lot as everyone has made their way home from that 5 o'clock rush hour traffic.
00:30 But this winter storm came in quick and it definitely left an impression.
00:33 A lot of those roads earlier were completely snow covered, saw many accidents along the interstates, including a wrecker that you're seeing here that actually got stuck trying to pull someone out of the ditch that had crashed there earlier.
00:44 And throughout a lot of these side streets, there was multiple city buses that were stuck and there for a few hours, it was just total chaos here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
00:52 Things have really died down now, but as you can kind of see right here, this has been the next problem.
00:57 A lot of this snow is so heavy and it's hanging on these tree branches. A lot of them are starting to collapse from under the pressure.
01:03 And while I was here, there were several green flashes and those were from transformers exploding under the pressure of that snow and having tree branches actually fall onto them.
01:11 So some of the folks here in Ann Arbor are definitely going to be in the dark here tonight.
01:15 And Aaron, what are your chase plans here as we move on through the rest of this event into tomorrow?
01:22 Well, that's what's interesting about this storm is that it may be pushing off to the northeast, but the effects are far from done because now we're going to transition into a lake effect producing snow from the backside of the storm system.
01:34 So after I leave here, I'm going to be heading back west toward Benton Harbor along Lake Michigan, setting up for that, for those problems that it's going to inevitably be causing tomorrow.
01:42 And some of those areas can see an additional six plus inches of snow just from the lake effect on top of what they've already gotten from this storm.
01:48 from this storm. All right. Great stuff there. Aaron Rigsby. Be safe. Thank you for that report.