WTF Atlanta?
 

2" of snow and the entire city is brought to its knees?? Wow.

We have the same problem here in TX.

You have to remember that areas that only see this type of weather occasionally do not have the infrastructure to deal with it.

Few plows, sanders or even a stockpile of sand and salt much less staff that know what to do.

The yearly total average for Atlanta is only 2 inches. In southern states .5-1 inch is no big deal as the sun will take care of it before lunch.

But when you get ice and cloud cover you are totally screwed.

you're funny speeder, don't you guys in LA have some of the worst traffic on that highway of yours?
What do you think would happen if Mother Nature threw and inch or two of snow or some ice on it??:rolleyes::rolleyes:

It's like snow and frost in England. Traffic stops and pipes freeze. Here in Los Angeles a slight sprinkling results in "Storm Watch" on local TV!

No kidding. It ever snows in PHX and I'm staying home. No way in hell would I try to go out. They have enough trouble with rain!

I was visiting the DFW area when they had a light round of sleet and freezing rain go through. I think apocalyptic would accurately describe the mood.

Denis, doesn't SoCal shut down when it rains?:p

I think it was the ice, not the snow that whacked them. I had a bit of snow a year or two ago and it froze, and in my Camry, I slide down my not real steep 300 foot driveway.

I spent the first 23 years of my life in Minnesota. I don't even slow down my driving in 2" of snow. I could drive a 1970 Ford LTD with worn summer tires in that. Wait...I did at one time.

But you're right about one thing-if it snowed in L.A., it would be a mess. It's too warm here, though. Last time was 1949 and it was about an inch.

Even a small amount of snow, compressed by traffic and in sub freezing temps forms a zero traction surface. Add in ice and lots and lots of hills, mix with poor decisions by state, city and county leaders that caused every parent and every worker to head for home at the same time and you get the miserable result we've seen.
Oh, and not to forget the thousands of 18 wheelers using I-75, I-85 and I-20 through the Metro area. The end result was gridlock, traffic unable to move for hours and hours and hours on end. On a positive note it also bought out the best in many people helping the stranded!

Portland is similarly shut down by snow, though it takes more like 6".

I remember one year it was snowing enough to shut the runways at PDX. TV showed a snowplow, clearing a track in the snow. Then the camera pulled back and showed just that one plow alone on all the runways and taxiways, an ant-like speck in a huge expanse of white. It was funny as heck and I realized my street was never, ever going to be plowed . And it never was.

That would be a horrible ride down an icy hill, hope there is nothing to hit at the bottom.

Disasters seem to bring out the best in some people, the worst in others.

Slid to a stop at the bottom and parked it.

The mayor of Atlanta was on TV today apologizing for not being proactive with respect to the traffic situation.

Said he should have staggered rush hours - schools first....then private sector....then government sector.

I think they only had a couple days notice which isn't much when there's so much to plan for.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Devil Dog Mosport View Post
To all my Southern Pcar brothers and sisters, don't feel to guilty about not being able to drive in that nasty white stuff. Without using salt/sand on the roads and having the correct tires and equipment Even us experienced, winter road tested experts would have the same outcome under your conditions.

Exactly.. I get sick of hearing it also and I'm originally from Buffalo. Snow has nothing to with it really, it's the ice. Solid sheets of ice that you can't even walk on let alone drive on, and it was mainly the 18 wheelers that got stuck everywhere and created the main bottlenecks. That combined with the fact the everybody left work at the same so the salt trucks couldnt get through. The average drive time home was over 12 hours to go 20 miles. Thousands of cars stranded everywhere, hundreds of people sleeping in their cars, etc. Some scenes were borderline horrific. Hundreds of small school children trapped on buses overnight.
My wife made it 16 miles in 13 hours, finally pulled over, slept in her car until @ 3:30am, and then it took another 2 hours to get home. She left work at @ 12:15pm, and finally got home at 6:30am. My company got us hotel rooms by the airport thank goodness!

I just don't understand the point of you starting a thread making fun of a city that probably 80+% of its drivers have never experienced driving in these weather conditions

I see threads on here every day about how you guys get on the news channels for blowing things out of proportion and you are basically doing the same thing

we get bad weather in MD all the time and idiots still can not drive in it

I was in Dallas on business a couple years ago when snow and ice came in. It was unreal. I had no trouble getting around, but was the only person on the road at times. When I returned the rental car to the airport, the attendant mentioned that I was only customer she had in three days who did NOT wreck their car...

•A state of emergency remains in effect for all of Georgia due to impacts from a winter storm on Tuesday through this morning.

•Solid sheets of compacted ice and snow continue on many sections of roadways in the Atlanta metro area. This continues to cause extremely hazardous road conditions with some areas still impassable. Any melting that occurred this afternoon has frozen and become dangerous sheets of black ice. Roads will be extremely treacherous through Thursday morning.

•The Georgia Emergency Management Agency requests that travel be limited to emergencies only for your safety, and for the safety of emergency officials and Georgia Department of Transportation employees that continue to respond to the dangerous impacts of the winter storm.

They showed the Atlanta traffic jams on the local news tonight. 2" of snow can be like 20" if your not used to it.

Atlanta and snow
 

Happens every time! Folks just don't know when to stay off the interstate highways! All it takes is a small accident and traffic will back up for miles and miles. One time a number of years ago, I285 (the perimeter road) was a solid ring of iron all the way around which is about 60+ miles! When I lived in the metro area, I always arranged to get home and be off the roads before the ice and snow got that bad.

2" of snow right at the freezing temp is VERY difficult if you're not accustomed to it. We are more used to it up north and most people have studded tires or at least snow/All season tires.

That's not going to change when you only get snow once in a while.

Hope Atlanta manages to get past all this, looks like a real disaster, I feel for them on those freeways.

Has nothing to do with ability. I drove in Michigan winters for 20 years with no issues. Here in Atlanta, you can be completely, safely stopped on untreated ice as your car starts sliding sideways, forward or backward into other cars. Lots of hills and curves, etc. WTF, indeed.

I'm sure that it was very slippery. I just could not believe the effect of a pretty minor snowfall on an entire large city...wow. Snow is not entirely unheard of there, right? Just really rare? Honest question.

I can understand how a southern city would not dedicate the resources for city-wide snow removal equipment when it rarely snows, though. Dozens of large plow trucks and sanders is big $$$.

In Minneapolis, (population 1M), that snowfall would not have even been a snow emergency, meaning no plowing anywhere. Just salt on the freeways to melt the ice.

Leaders screwed up down there. If you don't have the gear to deal with the situation, fine. But this wasn't a surprise. Why the hell didn't all levels of government shut down? Why were the kids at school? Why didn't the governor ask employers to keep workers home. It's not the citizens fault, its the rubes in charge.

This. We have a small chance starting Friday for a few days of light ice and snow. Crews were out pre-treating the roads yesterday with that brine deicer stuff. It will be a total non-event. If you can't take care of the roads, tell your citizens to stay off of them.

Atlant traffic sucks in perfect weather.

I'm often out before the roads are treated, and yes, snow plows and salt make a HUGE difference. Half an inch of snow becomes ice when it's packed onto the pavement. The problem with Atlanta, as I see it, is that the mayor knew bad weather was coming, knew they weren't prepared to deal with it, and didn't send kids home from school and close government buildings. Cancelling school for a day or two isn't the end of the world, and it's a heck of a lot better to do it proactively than waiting until the day after the roads are turned into parking lots.

Geez Denis, how many times do you have to be told it is not the snow, it is the ice. When I was in college. It took me 15 hours to drive 25 miles in Oregon. Traffic just stopped at Rice Hill, OR. Every single person that got out of the car to pee, immediately fell down. The only reason I was driving on it at all before traffic stopped and not crashing is that it was dead straight. Well, that and the fact that I had a football player, my brother and two generously proportioned gals in a B733 BMW sedan, gravity was my friend. You could walk easily on the shoulder, where there was snow, even with the sheet of ice on it.

There were teardrop shaped icicles falling from the sky that day. Snowed a foot in a day a few months later in Salem, also a mess. Stayed home and drank Tuaca and apple cider with this national champion triple jumper...

It would have been much worse had it not been for the newly acquired snow plows!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1391090967.jpg

We had two semi shut downs in central Texas in the last week. The first was pretty bad and they were prepared. The deicing glaze they put down before the ice came caused a bunch of wrecks. Later that evening and next morning the ice came and wiped out much of the Austin area. It really wasn't very bad though.

Tuesday brought ice right at morning rush hour. They weren't prepared. They shut down lots of bridges and overpasses during peak traffic. Austin schools closed, but only after announcing a delayed start the night before. Most places opened at noon though.

I found it as a great opportunity to get some errands done. It was great, no line at the bank drive thru, grocery store was empty, and only one bridge to deal with. Traversing it was no big deal, but yet there were two coppers pacing traffic, behind me.

I found it kind of funny. The GF grew up in Chicago and has made remarks about how it's not a big deal to drive in that kind of weather, yet she turned around those days after a few blocks and waited for the roads to thaw. I told her, although it may be white, it's not snow honey, it's ice.

What we need here is........some more global warming. Come on Algore, make it happen.

I'm fully aware that it was icy. Believe it or not, the roads get icy in the great frozen north as well.

I've driven a lot on slippery roads, including driving taxi all winter in college and for a year in the '90s. There were times when it was so slippery with black ice that people would fall instantly when they stepped out of the car. Those conditions truly suck. Maybe Atlanta was completely covered in wet ice...IDK. It just looked like run of the mill snow and ice in the film I saw.

I have lots of gnarly winter driving stories but here is the best/worst one: I'm driving a taxi in college in Mpls., winter of '81/'82. I work nights. I get a call to pick someone up @ Hennepin Co. Medical Center, main hospital downtown. It's late, maybe around midnight.

My taxi was a Ford Fairmont sedan, an $8.00 car that you could kick to death wearing tennis shoes. Two strong guys could tip it over in the long direction.

Anyhow...I arrive at the hospital and the passengers are a young couple from Mexico or Central America who hablared zero English and their newborn baby. They were bringing their baby home. They somehow gave me their address, maybe wrote it down. I can't remember.

We left the hospital and headed for 35W south, the entrance is on the south edge of DT. It was a brutally cold night, probably 15 below zero F. There was almost no traffic. I accelerated down the long entrance ramp at a normal speed and entered the freeway. It seems to me that I was moving across the lanes towards the left lane when I hit black ice and we spun 720 degrees @ 60 mph. There was absolutely nothing to do but enjoy the ride. Thankfully to god, there was no other traffic and we did not bounce off the guardrail.

When we stopped spinning, I turned towards them in the back seat and apologized profusely but I could have been telling them I did it on purpose for all they understood me.

The young father just nodded and I got the car pointed south and continued to their destination without anymore drama. They're probably still telling that story 33 years later.

Black ice is no joke.

Denis, in Minneapolis and other areas that get snow regularly the population has snow tires, chains and anything else needed to get around.

Here in my area tire shops don't even stock snow tires.

Only a small percentage o people in MN have separate snow tires for winter. I never did. New cars all come with all-season tread and AWD is popular. Chains are very rarely seen, you cannot drive on dry roads with them.

Everyone damn sure has an ice scraper for their windshield, though.

I've used my scraper quit a bit lately. In the picture below it was pointless, why bother if you can't even get in the car. It was encased in ice, sealed shut.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1391094735.jpg

I can understand how Atlanta happened, given the authorities failure to declare any kind of weather emergency. Sometimes I get lazy and drive the 2WD Chevy 1/2 ton in light snow instead of the 4WD Tundra. The Chevy has all season tires on it and it is like a hog on ice on the slightest cold wet pavement. The Tundra pulls the trailer that I move the plow tractor and snow blower with. If I really want to get anyplace I have to wait for the road crews or unhook the trailer, a job I really, really hate.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal Calls Winter Storm That Snarled Atlanta 'Unexpected.' Really? - weather.com Officials Come Under Fire for Snow


City Leaders dropped the ball.

Good stuff.

My one and only Triple Salchow in a car was in Massachusetts.

Freshman year in college. I was having a fling with a gal I had met in Charleston the past summer. She went to school at Williams.

We decided that since I got out a few days ahead for Christmas break, I would fly into Albany, make myself useful for a few days with my best friend from HS, who went to Union College in Schenectady, NY, and then we'd all drive on to South Carolina in her car, a VW Type 3 Squareback.

My second day there, big storm. I had driven her car to Union College to stay with Mike at his fraternity (this was the 1970's and Williams dorms were not, uh, integrated.

All goes well until I exit route 7, if I recall a long off ramp. At the bottom of the ramp I am carrying way to much speed as I hit the black ice attempting a right hand turn.

Nice 360 across the intersection, a 360 into the entrance to a restaurant and the final 360 in the parking lot. Over 1000 degrees of spin without hitting a single thing or damaging the car.

The drive to Williams was driven with a bit more care:cool:

Um, we have more than one highway and we don't have the worst traffic... it can be really bad at commuter hours on some highways... but no worse than I have experienced in Orlando or Portland... and then there is Boston.

But I see the point of others that Atlanta isn't exactly prepped for snow/ice so gridlock not too unexpected.

So why don't they (Atlanta) just call a snow day and have everyone stay at home the rare times it does happen?

Dead on.

But watch the politicians scramble to avoid responsibility. :rolleyes:

Has anyone owned up yet?

Anyone can make a mistake but your character is defined when things go south.

This morning I saw a lady in a mini van using her long handled ice scrapper as sort of a shovel. :rolleyes: Most likely a lack of talent and poor tires, as there was maybe a couple inches of fresh snow over hard pack.

I would of helped, but I was going the other way and traffic was a biotch. She probably would be in the same predicament next time she stopped. :cool: