Posted on 01/29/2014 5:02:55 AM PST by Biggirl
ATLANTA (AP) -- Students camped out with teachers in school gyms or on buses and commuters abandoned cars along the highway to seek shelter in churches, fire stations - even grocery stores - after a rare snowstorm left thousands of unaccustomed Southerners frozen in their tracks.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
I’m not having problems, are other people?
When I first moved to Georgia from New Hampshire a neighbor saw my snow shovel and remarked that in Georgia people don’t shovel snow, they wait for it to go away. He was right.
3 inches of snow and the whole city shuts down. Amazing!
that is ridiculous
I made a call to College of Charleston yesterday and they were CLOSED because they were anticipating snow!
Generally, when it snows in Atlanta the roadways are still warm and the initial snows melts. Within minutes, the below-freezing air freezes the melted snow and in an hour's time the roads of an entire metro area are completely covered with ice, not snow.
It's similar to the phenomenon that causes Atlanta to have ice storms, where all outdoor surfaces, including power lines and tree limbs, become covered with 1/2" or more of solid ice.
I could drive in Boston and Chicago snow. I can't drive in Atlanta ice.
My son in college in Mississippi, went out and was pulled behind a 4-wheeler in a plastic box (he also went target-shooting to make his "Redneck Winter Festival" complete).
When I was going to Mississippi State back in the early 1980's, during snow storms we'd take lunch trays out of the cafeteria and then slide down "hernia hill", a large hill near the middle of campus. There would be students at the top of both hills on the road that would stop traffic when there were kids running down, then let the traffic through when they cleared out (the cafeteria sold old trays for .50 each so we weren't stealing anything). The cafeteria and student union would both have hot chocolate. It was a real festival.
apparently people were stranded all over the Birmingham metro area and still are. I saw plenty yesterday when it took an hour and a half to get to my children—usually a 25 minute drive. The weather itself wasn’t the worst I have been in, it was the drivers and the hills.
3 inches of snow and the whole city shuts down.
Got .6” in Spartanburg, SC. That’s six tenths of an inch.
No School. No work. No mail delivery. Nuthin...
Of course, it’s all ice. I don’t care where you’re from, you can’t drive on ice. Especially when there are no sanding or salting trucks available below the Mason-Dixon line.
Don’t forget the “Houston Strong” t-shirts and the all-star concert!
1 inch in Chattanooga and it was a mess. Not as bad as Atlanta, not by a long shot, but several people had a very long, slow drive home yesterday afternoon.
In defense of Atlanta (maybe defense is the wrong word), that city is just one "fender-bender" away from traffic chaos anyway. It has way too many cars for the amount of road/infrastructure as it is. Throw in slippery roads and you have a complete mess.
And no, southern cities don't have fleets of salt/plow trucks standing by like they do up north. It wouldn't make sense to spend that kind of money for trucks that they'd only use once every 3 years or so.
” I don’t care where you’re from, you can’t drive on ice”
The northerners I know always laughed about it until their first real ice storm, then they understood the difference between ice and the pretty snow.
“I’m not having problems, are other people?”
Still snowing here at the northern OBX in NC. Only about 5 inches of snow, just not equipped to handle it.
Pff. Its easy to drive on ice. Wusses. (Never mind that where I live a railroad grade is a steep hill...)
Snow is easy. Driving on ice is treacherous.
I’m in the worst of it and I’m like WTF there’s only 1/2 on the ground.
I can drive in New Jersey ice.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.