Two major pileups on the same highway, on the same day during this 2016 storm
Early December lake-effect snow led to travel nightmares in several states in 2016, worst in Pennsylvania, with several pileups.
This Day In Weather History is a daily podcast by Chris Mei from The Weather Network, featuring stories about people, communities and events and how weather impacted them.
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The first half of December 2016, was an unlucky one on the roads of Pennsylvania, with a succession of pileups that left major highways strewn with wrecked cars and mangled metal.
The first, on December 8th, 2016, saw at least 15 people injured in a multi-vehicle crash on Interstate 90 in the northwestern part of the state, apparently due to lake-effect snow. At least five tractor-trailers and several cars were involved, and it took hours to clear the wreckage, forcing several people to take shelter in a school bus at the scene.
The eastbound lanes were finally reopened about midnight, but the westbound lanes weren't cleared until mid-morning the following day.
The chaos wasn't limited to Pennsylvania. Elsewhere on the I-90 that day, in Ohio, similarly snowy conditions led to a pileup of more than 50 cars, including a Greyhound bus, shutting down the highway for more than 14 hours. A pileup in Michigan the same day left three people dead.
One week later, on December 15th, yet another massive wreck happened in western Pennsylvania, this time on the I-80. This time, three people were hurt in the pileup, which involved 59 vehicles altogether – 22 tractor-trailers and 37 cars.
As with the earlier wreck, it wasn't the only one. In fact, a total of three such collisions shut down different stretches of the I-80 that day, once again blamed on bands of lake-effect snow. Upstate New York also experiencing collisions, one involving a tractor-trailer and a snowplow. In all, a damaging few days in the leadup to the "official" start of winter that year.
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Thumbnail courtesy of Lake County Sheriff's Office via Storyful
