Winter Storm Slams South, Stranding Students, Snarling Traffic

[Purveyor]

Source: LA TIMES

An unusual blanket of snow across the South triggered epic traffic snarls and stranded hundreds of students at their schools Tuesday.

Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama struggled to cope with 2 to 4 inches of snow, while Atlanta’s 3 inches led to six-hour commutes -- at least for drivers who didn't abandon their cars on the slippery roads.

"I just decided to get ... out and walk home like the rest of the people. I didn't know where they were going, but now I get it. This is stupid," one driver said in a video posted to Instagram, which turned into a catalog of traffic jams and snowball fights for Georgians unused to snow.

"Georgia was not ready for this, y'all," another user posted in a video capturing a massive traffic jam in downtown Atlanta, at one point focusing on an emergency vehicle that had gotten bogged down in the lines of waiting cars. "The [darn] ambulance can't even get through."

As drivers burned through audio books and made unexpected friends in the endless traffic, Gov. Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency for the entire state of Georgia.


http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-winter-storm-hits-south-20140128,0,4157560.story#ixzz2rlYW6CEj

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-winter-storm-hits-south-20140128,0,4157560.story#ixzz2rlYW6CEj

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Watching a Roku stream out of Birmingham, AL and yeah, it is as bad as written...

[greymattermom]

1. Nine hours in traffic

It took my daughter's boyfriend 9 hours to get from Buford to Dunwoody. Yep, that bad.

[2naSalit]

2. Been down that way

when it's snowed in the 1980s, not a good deal. Those folks just don't know how to drive on anything but pavement and dirt. If it's slippery, they don't know what to do.

The good news is, up here where the rivers start, looks like we'll get some too over the next couple days! The stuff on the ground right now is old, stale, dried out concrete-like nasty. And the temps are more like what we get in April or May, kind of creepy.

Hope the melt comes quick for everybody in the south, bizarre weather like that kind of makes life weird and dangerous.

[truthisfreedom]

4. The pavement itself is different than in snowy areas, plus there's little preparation with sand and

salt and plowing. In Minnesota the city streets are filled with trucks prepping the surface and we almost all have all-season or winter tires which work much better in snow than standard treads. Everything is working against them in heavy snow, inexperience included, in the south.

[truthisfreedom]

3. Obviously Obama's fault.

Dammit.

[jakeXT]

5. Kids today.... we had no internet back then

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/minute-minute-updates-winter-storm/nc5Dq/

[Shadowflash]

6. Ha ha.

Two to four inches?

Oh noes!

[melm00se]

7. 2 to 4 inches

can be a disaster if you, generally, get little or no snow.

A lot of people there have never driven in the snow and are petrified of it.

Couple that with the fact that it can snow, the temps warm, melt just a little bit of the snow and then the temps drop turning the roads into ice skating rinks, driving can be extremely treacherous.

I am originally from Buffalo. Can I drive in this? sure, no big issue. Can my neighbor (born and bred in the South) drive in it? Probably. Do I want to be anywhere near him when he does? Hell no. I have seen too many folks drive in this and end up going 40 mph sideways.

BTW, just because you live where it snows does not confer immunity to slipping and sliding. My brother tells an Army story: they were in German Alps and the snow was flying. A guy in his unit said "I grew up in Minnesota, I can drive in this". No sooner than he took the wheel and drove a quarter of mile, the deuce and a half went into a ditch.

[SnowCritter]

10. I've lived in MN all my life and I've also been to the German Alps

and I can say with a great deal of certainty that there are few slopes that compare to the Alps in Minnesota. Some of those alpine roads are tough to drive on in good weather, let alone when the snow is flying. I'm grateful that I never had to take on those roads in the snow.

[hedgehog]

13. SNOW IS A DISASTER WHEREVER IT LANDS!!!!!!!

The difference is that people who live where it snows frequently have built the governmental infrastructure and taken individual initiative to handle the disaster. I'm from Buffalo, too, and I can tell you that the heavy wet snow that falls at the beginning and end of the season makes for some of the worst winter driving. If you're on the road ahead of the plows, you're on an ice skating rink, and people end up in the ditch even in Buffalo.

We have a method for handling ice covered roads here in the North - we stay home until the salt trucks and plows have been through!

Community preparedness makes the annual disaster look like business as usual. For comparison - think of Katrina if

- there had been a properly prepared refuge for people who couldn't leave the city
- there had been a plan to evacuate people without transportation - and a place for them to go
- hospitals had been able to maintain power - and communication with the outside
- the levees had been properly maintained

Again - if there is a medium earthquake in California, it may make the news after the first commercial. When there is a similar earthquake along the Madrid fault, people are going to die.

[melm00se]

14. back home

it was the 1st heavy snow of the year that I dreaded. No one remembers how to drive from the previous winter. Fortunately that settles down after the 1st couple of days.

[hedgehog]

15. I think it is a combo of people not slowing down -

and the fact that those wet snows tend to compact to a greasy surface - people out of practice, very bad conditions.

[Baclava]

8. icy, snowy - such a novelty! - the good news, it'll be back up around 70 by the weekend

I even had to dig out some socks to wear

[adirondacker]

9. -28 F here in the north country this morning. Snow and teen temps would feel tropical!

[SnowCritter]

11. Only -10 here in central MN this morning

supposed to get up to 25. The mercury hasn't climbed above zero for a couple of days (the high on Monday was around -10; Tuesday it made it all the way up to -4).

It's a freakin' heat wave, I'm tellin' ya'.

[adirondacker]

12. This was the coldest it's been so far without windchill this year here. We don't have to worry about

falling through the ice on the lakes
+30 forecast for the day after tomorrow... T shirt weather

I stopped through your state last summer to visit a couple of good friends in Grand Rapids. Nice community.

[JNelson6563]

17. About 12 in northern MI this morning!

And the winds are a bit lessened today, thankfully! That below zero with 35+ mph winds is wretched!

Julie

[dixiegrrrrl]

24. THAT picture!!!!!!!!!!

omg...where did you get it????

I love you for your sense of humor....

stealing now.....

[Baclava]

27. What's mine is yours...

of course I can't remember who I stole it from, surely they would have wanted you to have it

[Dash87]

20. If you don't have the equipment, it's a nightmare.

The US's cold areas have those huge plows that take away the snow. Georgia doesn't, I'm guessing. Some places also drop de-icing stuff that melts ice and snow.

[MadrasT]

21. Atlanta is pretty hilly and the roads turned to solid ice pretty quick.

It's not really about the depth of the snow.

[kestrel91316]

26. I spent most of my first 25 years in the Mountain West and

you know where I saw the worst, most dangerous road conditions in my life? Not in a CO or UT blizzard, not in our SoCal flooding, but in southern OH after a sleet storm left over an inch of ice on literally every surface.

It was too dangerous to go out to the mailbox, let alone drive or walk anywhere. In GA with this storm, snow slightly melted and then turned to ice.

Get a clue.

[onehandle]

16. When I lived in Atlanta, I learned long ago, to stay home when snow was coming.

Most of these office workers and students could have stayed home.

I can't believe people are still doing this to themselves there.

I do believe that the teabagger run state government is too cheap to properly prepare for snow.

Meanwhile, here in Pennsylvania, we had ten inches of snow last week and many roads were drivable the next day.

[2naSalit]

18. Up here

in Montana mountains, they don't even get out the plows until there's at least four inches of snow.

[Baclava]

19. yeah - but you can huddle with your sheep to keep warm - we need the SUN!

2 days without the shining of our lord - our god is forsaking us!

the good news it will back up around 70 this weekend, yea verily

[Baclava]

22. "It was like a movie or something"

[Fastcars]

23. Between trucks and buses I have almost two million miles driving.

And it isn't the two inches of snow. It is the 1/8 inch of ice. NO ONE can drive on ice. Especially in a V8 rear wheel drive vehicle.

I have been in pretty much every state in the continental U.S. during the winter and ice is the great equalizer. Your car does what it wants when on ice. The fact that the South has little need for road prep 99.9% of the time makes it easier to simply shut down for the once a decade storm like this. Problem is the weather forecasters got it wrong.

[dixiegrrrrl]

25. I wish more folks here had your insight, and maturity.

So easy for armchair road warriors to second guess people down here who had to go thru this weather,
and apparently no empathy for the ones that died here in Ala.

I have lived here for years, and this is the first time I have seen ice covering my plants.
And for the past 2 days and looks like tomorrow and tomorrow night.
Ice!!! This far south.

No way are my neighbours used to driving in this stuff.
Fortunately, the town is shut down, no body is moving, no traffic at all today.

[jakeXT]

28. Only with spikes or tire chains

[Paladin]

29. +1000.

Several years of living in Colorado taught me that there is no such thing as competent and safe driving on ice.

It's unfortunate that the Atlanta situation has led to so much region-bashing here at DU. Make that "....so much MORE region-bashing." There's always too much of it going on.