TV Crews Stuck in Snowball Fight and Heavy Traffic — Captured on Film

TV Crews Stuck in Snowball Fight and Heavy Traffic — Captured on Film

The latest snowstorm to hit parts of the country is not just canceling school and altering commutes. It is also forcing reporters to think quickly when out in the field.

The latest example of this comes courtesy of CNN. Tuesday night on "AC 360," Jason Carroll covered a tradition of sorts at Columbia University in New York City: snowball fights on Low Plaza. To the amusement of the students, the audience and Anderson Cooper himself, Carroll decided to report live from the middle of the fray. It played out exactly as you might imagine, with the CNN correspondent on the receiving end of a snow pummeling.

Carroll wasn't injured and seemed to be a good sport. Cooper definitely got a good laugh but managed to avoid another episode of the giggles.

Farther downtown, a FOX 5 journalist avoided the snowballs but could not evade the traffic. Reporter Joel Waldman noted that it took him five hours to travel from midtown Manhattan to Clifton, N.J. The drive is about 17 miles and usually takes a half-hour. Stuck in traffic, Waldman used his phone and filmed the journey in small clips to document each segment. He ended up with a TV report that looked as if it were shot on Instagram video.

"How long have you been sitting in that van?" Waldman asks a driver he encountered in midtown. The driver says a half-hour, adding that he thinks it'll take him another hour to get to New Jersey. Waldman then says to his camera, "If that guy thinks it's only taking him an hour to get to Jersey, he should be playing the lottery today."

Waldman filmed the clips vertically, so FOX 5 featured his clips in a graphic resembling a phone screen. The reporter eventually made it to Clifton, where he introduced the video live on the news.

Reporters weren't the only ones damaged by the storm, however. The iconic glass facade of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan is a little less symmetrical today, after a snowblower cracked the glass of one of its 32-foot-high glass panels last night. According to 9to5Mac, each one could cost as much as $445,000, but something tells us Apple has the cash on hand.