Just not a lot of still photo ops on this one. It was challenge enough to accomplish what I accomplished video wise. I knew when it was this bad in town that it had to be stupidly bad over the river into the flats. I should have tried more still stuff I guess now that I think about it.   Chased this surprisingly intense snow storm/blizzard yesterday in western Iowa, not far from home. The area to most maximize wind and blowing snow around here would be the flats along I-29 north of Omaha, south of Sioux City. That's where I drove to and chased for about 4 hours. Just a wide open expanse there with absolutely no hills to slow the winds. Here is a topo map to show what I'm talking about: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Iowa_topography.jpg Go to the far left side of Iowa along the Missouri River and you'll see the pancake flat area there. Seems during snow storms this area will offer some of the best wind potential. Probably the most intense, low visibility day snow storm I've been in. Been in worse at night before(like 1995 edge of town) and the November 2005 one from north central NE was most certainly more intense....I was just stuck at a motel in the middle of town for that one(wind bent door hinges....which happened again on this one but I was able to fix it). Been in enough different winds now I can kinda guesstimate things fairly well. I don't know if any reporting stations registered anything above 60 mph around here with this one, but most did in the mid 50s. I'd be pretty surprised if out there in the flats a few times weren't in the 60-70mph range. The video might indicate it a couple times lol. A lot of it I would stand in the door of the Blazer so I was pinched against the frame and the door as the wind blew on the door. A few times it would just be pretty hard to get the door back off you. I took a ton of video but didn't include much from highway 30. The highway was downright scary to be around. Just several zones where it was almost constant 100% white out. People would do 40-50mph and just plow into that stuff. It was hard to even get up courage to pull onto the highway as you could see neither west nor east. The video here is mixed from the TM700 video camera and some other parts are actually from the DSLR canon T2i with an EF-s 10-22mm on....though largely at 22mm which isn't massively different than the wide end of the TM700. I mostly was using it as I was killing the TM700's batteries and also wanted to make sure if I somehow froze and killed the camera all together I'd have another version of this event. What was most informative on this one was just how fast things can go downhill and become truly dangerous to ones life in such a bad storm. What went wrong was simply the wind taking the door and pulling the door hinges away from the frame some. I was actually trying to be safe at the time with the doors and getting in and out, worrying about them being locked and me being stuck out of the car. So I cracked open the passenger side, but thought as I opened the drivers side that the wind would then just push the other open. So I then was reaching back to the passenger one to just close it and felt the car shake. I thought awe crap, wind just took my drivers side door that was barely cracked open right then. This one thing quite simply could kill a person. I wasn't far from home and had a cell phone so I wasn't concerned. It was day and I was near a highway too. But, it was an eye opener otherwise, if in some other location and situation! The one thing I noticed is the Blazer barely idles at over 100F on the temp gauge, when there are 50+ mph winds jamming 10F air against it. It's one part to consider in this sequence of things that can get you killed in a truly bad snow storm. As it was it was having a hard time keeping the windows clear of ice, just not idling warm enough. In a white out you open the door or window at all and rapidly the car gets filled with snow and ice. I was parked off a gravel road, backed into a field entry thing....right in a constant white out area. I was doing so because it was too dangerous to be sitting anywhere on the gravel road itself. Then the door hinges bent from the frame in that wind, as I was messing with the other door. This moves the door laterally away from the knob(knob on the frame the door latch goes over) when you try to close it. You simply can't shut the door then, at all. Cause it's not just get out and lift up or down on it and shut, you need it to move laterally which it won't. Not till you fix the hinge plates and get them pushed back down against the frame. In no time I was screwed!!! Raging blizzard was jamming snow and 10F air into a vehicle that won't idle warm as it was....and....you can't see anywhere to begin with if all else wasn't getting covered in ice. I was just like, I must get this door shut or I will be absolutely unable to drive anywhere. And that is the thing. I'd have had to call and get a ride had I not known how to get that hinge plate back down. Just jam the tire iron into the hinge area, then pull the door closed so the hinge itself and tire iron against the door, pinches the plate back. Really all it is is put the end of the tire iron in the hinge opening area and closing the door will do it all right. It's not confusing if it happens to you and you need to get a strong metal plate to bend back flush against a frame. It will work. You couldn't see more than a car most times during the storm there. Ice covered windows and endless snow and cold jamming in there and you couldn't see ANYTHING out of it. It was just real eye opening how bad a jammed door could be. Then one point I tried to idle the car higher to make more heat and it started to run rough. I was like, oh no, don't go and die too! Not that it would matter if the rest was happening and one was farther from home or anyone. I could literally not move that car anywhere till I fixed that door. All I could do was blindly pull back out of the field thing onto the road so I was facing north and the wind was pushing on the door, not in it trying to rip it open. That is what I did to be able to try and fix the door there. Once I bent the hinges back down there I wanted to go back into that field entrance deal. I just couldn't see a thing still. Once I was able to get heat going again and start clearing off windows could I slowly back up and locate that field entrance again. Even then it wasn't overly simple to do and find. After that I moved to that area near the trees in the video. Right before that spot was another constant white out area. That zone was really amazing. Wind was just insane sounding through the trees. And it was amazing to me I was able to keep losing any sight of the set of trees just ahead of me. Also worth noting in this is just how little snow there was. I'd be surprised if there was more than 3 inches on the ground in the area. Hell I know there wasn't. 2 inches was probably pushing it(hell I don't know I guess). Pretty much all the fields were blown dry. Like you had 2 inches or maybe a hair more but it was always in the air above the ground. An amazing event will happen over there if we can fill the ditches like we did last year with 20+ inch snow pack everywhere....then have a similarly windy system. Then you'd have like the EF5 of snow storm situations lol. This felt like an EF4 even with so little snow. Just amazingly how unrelenting the wind action was. If you are a member on vimeo you can actually download the 260 meg WMV file of this, which is why I sent it there. The compression just kind of kills low contrast stuff.   December 11, 2010 Iowa Blizzard from Mike Hollingshead on Vimeo.