Posted on 01/30/2014 12:45:37 AM PST by grundle
Thousands of Atlanta students stranded all night long in their schools were reunited with their parents Wednesday, while rescuers rushed to deliver blankets, food, gas and a ride home to countless shivering motorists stopped cold by a storm that paralyzed the business capital of the South with less than 3 inches of snow.
The result was gridlock on freeways that are jammed even on normal days. Countless vehicles were stranded and many of them abandoned. Officials said 239 children spent Tuesday night aboard school buses; thousands of others stayed overnight in their schools.
One woman's 12-mile commute home took 16 hours. Another woman gave birth while stuck in traffic; police arrived just in time to help. Drivers who gave up trying to get home took shelter at fire stations, churches and grocery stores.
National Guardsmen in Humvees, state troopers and transportation crews delivered food and other relief
Among the commuters trapped in the gridlock was Jessica Troy, who described her commute home to the suburb of Smyrna as a slow-motion obstacle course on sheets of ice.
"We literally would go 5 feet and sit for two hours," Troy said after she and a co-worker who rode with her finally made it home about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday. They spent more than 16 hours in the car, covering 12 miles.
At Atlanta's Deerwood Elementary School, librarian Brian Ashley spent Tuesday night with a dozen of his colleagues and 35 children on cots in the gym.
About 1,000 arrivals and departures were canceled at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
I gather the problem is from very thick ice, rather then snow.
It is still hard to understand how it could have gotten that far out of hand.
Here in Maryland I can drive in many inches of snow as long as the others are not on the road,
They either drive 20 creating backups or then end up in a ditch.
I was born and raised in Georgia.. This is not news. What are there six snowplows in Atlanta? Ice is usually a bigger problem than snow, but given the opportunity to trash something, the author left that out. I can get out of any bad snow day by reminding everyone they will be on twisty Appalachian, ice covered roads with a Georgia Peach. I did forget to use that this year. Thanks for the reminder.
They started out in a warmer part to the day and after the melt froze they were lost.
If there aren’t salt trucks, it can get out of hand very rapidly.
The weird thing is that I can remember seeing ‘brag spots’ on TV with the DOT, City of Atlanta DOT, etc. talking about how “they’ve got it covered now.” They were ‘being proactive’, gonna use some kind of salt brine using some kind of material (which I can remember but thought was odd like pickle juice of something). They cut some contractors and bought their own equipment, blah, blah blah...
I guess we all know how that turned out now.
“They started out in a warmer part to the day and after the melt froze they were lost.”
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No, it has to be more then that. I spent my first 55 years in Memphis, where we had similar situations on numerous occasions. I learned how to drive on ice as a teen. It was great fun for us teenagers, as we drove to various city park lakes to go ice skating on the ponds.
The park commission set up barrels of burning wood to keep us warm.
It does appear that the longer an area goes without such weather, the harder it is for citizens to adapt.
Add to that the rapid growth in Atlanta’s population over a rather short period of time. There were obviously many that had never experienced driving in severe winter conditions.
Was it beet juice?
Why didn’t Obama just stand outside and command the winds and the snow to cease?! Doesn’t he CARE that people are dying?
And by the way, where the hell is FEMA while this storm makes people suffer?
I don’t remember, really. It wasn’t like the kind of granularized stuff they used to use. Just some kind of liquid that had a lot of salt in it.
“I don’t remember, really. It wasn’t like the kind of granularized stuff they used to use. Just some kind of liquid that had a lot of salt in it.”
I believe some places use sea water.
Most of Atlanta is very hilly...and all the salt and plows won’t help if the road freezes quickly. No matter how well people drive, going uphill on an icy road can be impossible
They use that brine garbage here in TN. It goes down wet but dries into slightly granular salt. I suppose it works to some degree because they keep using it, but I haven’t seen great results. If they managed to put any down around Atlanta, it doesn’t appear it did any good. That ice looked pretty thick so the brine may not have been enough to deal with it.
What’s bad is when they put it down and we don’t get any precipitation. The salt is on the roads and when cars drive over it, the tires kick salt dust into the air. Breathing that stuff is awful and it messes up folks’ sinuses and lungs. No telling what the health risks are in the long run. Can’t be good. I just know it makes my sinuses bleed and my lungs feel like they’re on fire.
They’ve put it down twice around here in the past week and we barely got a dusting of snow either time. We need a good rain to wash the junk away. We’re miserable and even our cats are having problems.
A few facts keep getting left out: the NWS issued a winter storm warning at 4am telling people that the snow would start mid morning and to stay off the roads. But the temperature dropped even faster than the NWS thought it would. The previous day was warm and the initial snow melted and refroze. Traffic did not help and traffic was going to be bad even without the snow.
We had a similar incident in Raleigh in 2005.
Forecasters predicted light dusting, no sticking. Even as it was sticking they were telling us it wasn’t. Only about 1-1/2” actually fell. and it stuck. It had been cold for a day or two.
People started leaving work around 2 pm. Streets were untreated, no plowing.
The first few folks had no trouble but the snow was compacted down into ice.
By the time officials decided to let schools out most of the road were ice and gridlocked. Too late. Kids slept in school. People spent the night in their cars stuck on the thoroughfares. Eight, twelve hours wasn’t unusual.
This round of weather the schools were closed Tues. with zero precip. coming in until evening.
Officials were overcautious this time.
here in central P.A this happens about every day. Havent missed a day at work in 45 years.
Try it without salt next time.
The mayor said they had 50.
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