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.
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The hysteria around this “storm” is embarrassing.
Up north, here in upper east Tennessee, we have all those trucks. They are the ordinary trucks that are temporarily outfitted with salt dispensers and blades. The DOT uses dump trucks out fitted with tanks that dispense a liquid on the Interstates. It is very effective.
Our experience today is almost unique in my memory. We had light snow falling for hours on end at 15 degrees or less. We had what we skiers prayed for but never ever got....... powder. The accumulation is now bout 4” and the temp is 4 as well.
Stopping is the hard part.
I imagine this to be a crisis of epic proportions because, when confined to home, the courtesy of southern hospitality demands cooking marathons, producing vast quantities of food that is the antonym of “healthy”.
Rich, delicious, and you can hear your capillaries slamming shut. An entire pie is *not* an individual portion, nor is a whole rack of fresh, fluffy biscuits and cornbread, a KFC sized bucket of home fried chicken, mountains of deep fried vegetables, etc.
Oh, and gallons of sugared iced tea.
Well many places like our area 1 inch of snow. LOL!
4 hour local news blocks regarding the weather with helpful advice like “Its bad to build a fire pit in your living room” and “bridges ice before roads” brilliant fecus like that.
I am content with sitting in the leather chair in front of the fire.
RLTW
The biggest problem I have with my fellow Deep Southerners is how they (try) to drive on ice and snow. I got my ice/snow driving skills in places like Colorado, Massachusetts, Washington DC and Germany while in the US Air Force.
Rule # 1 is SLOW DOWN! I am amazed to see how many book just like they are on a rain slicked road. It is NOT the same thing. Last night I took a drive with my daughter in our little ice/snow bound town in Southern Alabama. Not much traffic, everyone was staying home which is Rule # 2.
Rule # 2 is If you don’t have to go out; don’t! Anyway on the drive on a road with a 45MPH speed limit I was doing 20-25 MPH. an idiot in a big ol’ pickup passed me and was probably doing 50 when he ditched it. I slowed down and offered to help, but he said no problem and spun his big ole tires until they smoked. I told him to ride up on the grass which would give him traction rather than trying to spin on the ice. He did and got out.
Rule # 3 is don’t expect a heavy, hard foot on the brake pedal to slow you down. Firm, short pumps. And follow rule # 1 so you don’t have to brake so hard. Many if not most spin outs happen when a driver stomps the brakes.
Last night I violated rule # 2. I was telling my teenage daughter that the most dangerous thing on these icy roads were other drivers, right before the pickup passed us. Who knows, maybe me being there going so slow caused him to get flustered, LOL!
4. Turn into the skid
Feh, you see it once every few years. In CT it’s a regular occurrence. The only ice we really need to worry about is what’s called black ice. In March and April the sun will melt the snow, and at night it freezes into perfectly smooth sheets of ice that you can’t see until your almost ion top of them. If you stop on on your car can slide sideways.
Thank you, yes that! Rule # 4!
If you’re on ice and start to slide, you might as well sit back and enjoy the ride. I don’t care WHERE you’re from; ice is bad news.
NJ sands and salts and scrapes the roads when you guys get ice. There’s probably not a single salt truck south of I-40. Much less enough of them to adequately cover a big metro area like Atl. I could ‘drive’ on NJ ‘ice’ too. I only hesistated when there was more than 8 or 10” in a fairly short period of time. Then I just waited for the salt trucks/plows to ‘take care of’ the turnpike and GSP before I headed out.
I wonder just how much of Atl’s problem was northerners who thought ‘I can drive on snow, it’s just a couple inches!’ and then got stuck because hey, no plows, no scrapers, no salt trucks and no sanding. Happened to a friend of mine who moved to the Memphis area. It’s easy to trick mother nature if you’ve got tricks up your sleeve.
That’s exactly what happened in Atl. The snow hit the warm roadways (it was in the 50’s the day before), melted and then refroze as the temps continued to plunge and it continued to snow.
CT has sanding and salt trucks and plows. Atl does not.
Yes, it’s always the Yanks’ fault. Even the snow.
Nah, we make chili and jambalaya. Hubby cooked a venison roast in the crock pot.
I made snow ice cream for the kids.
Then we drank hot tea, unsweetened, to stay warm.
Judging by the ‘it’s just 2” of snow!, what a bunch of idiots’ comments by northerners on this thread, and the number of northerners that have arrived in Atl over the past 20 years I dare you to tell me there weren’t any at fault in those big traffic jams.
And I’d like to see what happens in NJ if someone took all your plows, salting trucks and emptied your salt storage domes in the townships.
It’s easy to ‘drive on ice and snow’, if your municipality has the means to clear it before hand.
Was that for just breakfast, or just brunch?
It’s not the same. We regularly have temps well below freezing followed by rain. Happens all the time. Black ice is different.
I sympathize with your problems. The area and drivers are just not prepared for snow. Sometimes it’s better to check out early from work, or just not go in.
The whole day.
Kids had a larabar for snack in the afternoon.
Most people, who aren’t of food stamps, can’t afford to eat like that.
When your precipitation hits, melts and then freezes it’s all the same thing. Our high here Sunday was nearly 60.
We have black ice warnings out for today after it thaws a bit and refreezes after dark.
We still have no salting trucks or plows.
And the ambient temp at my house is 18F. So salt would be of dubious use anyways. I’m reminded to see if I can buy some of that blue chemical stuff that melts ice at lower temps than road salt.
Atl was supposed to see just a flurry yesterday. Unfortunately for them, the NWS mets busted that forecast bigtime. By the time they realized it would be a big problem everyone was at school or work already.
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