Photos, Radar: Another I-80 Pileup

There was another early-season snow-caused pileup on I-80 north of AccuWeather HQ yesterday. I say "another" because I blogged a very similar situation which unfolded this time of year in 2004, when as many as 70 vehicles crashed, killing six. Below is a RadarPlus screenshot from the time of the accident, and a link to a radar loop. As you can see, though several snow squalls had come through earlier in the afternoon, this one was by far the heaviest, sporting 35-40 dbZ snow (quite heavy). The earlier storms were lighter and the temperature probably hadn't fallen low enough to make the roads freeze yet.

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Just like I said on my blog yesterday, temperatures were diving below freezing and roads are the first snow of the season always gets you because the roads haven't been treated with salt yet. It's often a deadly combination; fortunately this time no one perished in the accident. After this storm, the roads will be salted and sanded well through the Spring. The story made the front page of our local newspaper, the Centre Daily Times. They posted some photos online and said:

"Fifteen vehicles, including seven tractor-trailers, crashed and piled up on an ice-covered Interstate 80 Thursday afternoon as a snow squall moved through and caused whiteout conditions. The pileup occurred about 3:35 p.m. on I-80 eastbound at mile marker 140 in Rush Township, near the Clearfield County line. The roadway looked like glass and firefighters were slipping and sliding about the wreckage. "We're very lucky," Boyde said, recalling the squall that two years ago led to a 44-car pileup and six deaths on the same highway."

Or, we could blame it on Evaporative Cooling like we saw around 1:30 yesterday afternoon here at AccuWeather HQ. This effect happens when the humidity of the air increases suddenly (i.e. it starts snowing heavily). The atmosphere states that when humidity goes up, temperature goes down. So the temperature falls suddenly, and if it passes the 32-degree mark, then you're in trouble. Check out the graph from our station here in State College yesterday:

In a matter of minutes, the temperature plunged from 35 to nearly 28, essentially "flash-freezing" snow and water on the roads.