Posted on 01/29/2014 5:09:35 AM PST by Pan_Yan
The blizzard of '93 brought more snow than most Atlanta natives had ever seen or will see.
The floods of 2009 brought an unexpected rush of water that submerged interstates.
The winter storm of 2011 took an entire week away from the city.
But the Snow Jam of 2014 might be the single craziest weather day in Atlanta in a generation.
1-to-3 inches of snow, mixed in with an afternoon drive that still hasn't ended has brought Atlanta to its knees again.
There are certain things we dont have control over and one of those is the weather. This came rather unexpectedly," Governor Nathan Deal said. "The time frame in which it hit was a very short time frame. And I think were better prepared now than we were in 2011.
Metro Atlanta interstates have been gridlocked since about 1 p.m. Tuesday. Commutes stretched 8-to-10 hours. And that's for those who actually got home.
Thousands have been stranded in their cars just sitting in the middle of the road.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsbradio.com ...
for you in NH? no...for here, yes.
You come down here and you’d be stuck like the rest of us were unless you had a 4WD jeep.
And there's the problem right there. Err on the side of caution and prudence and you look foolisg. A true no win situation.
My wife works at church on Thursday mornings.
I’m anxious to see how motivated she is to hit the trail this morn when it is -3.
So far she is still sitting at her computer
I have 3.
Lessons to be learned...
Ultimately, Gov’ment (Federal, state, Local) does VERY little well... I spent the night in my car between Gwinnett & Woodstock because I chose to... I could have been one of the MANY folks who decided to make a go of it, but COMMON SENSE told me that I’d be stranded possibly without a working vehicle.
When I left my house on Monday, I packed EXTRA Food, Water, bullets and blankets... I’ve lived here my whole life all the way back to the ice storm in the 70’s. There was NO WAY I was going to be a victim of the storm or conditions...
Bottom line for me: I’m responsible for my health and safety. I would NEVER have sent my kids to school no matter what the local school system (Gov’t) said. They are more worried about appearances than results.
I spent the night in a parking lot with 100’s of other people who felt the same way I did. I prepared BEFORE I went out just in case. My wife and kids were home SAFE...
I feel bad for those who depended on others for their information. I made all my decisions based on my own research...
Ultimately, YOU are responsible for YOU (and your family)...
I asked my wife Monday morning to run to the grocery store and get anything she wanted to have in case she couldn’t go again this week. We’ve been in good shape. Our county didn’t open the schools Tuesday so everyone was home, warm and well fed.
I have AWD car that came with summer performance tires. Had to leave it parked anytime it snowed. As soon as I replaced the tires with all season, I can go just about anywhere there isn’t a snow drift above ~5 inches..
Gee, aren’t you lucky.....
Actually, you can look through some of the news files here and see a few Jeeps too.
Point is that less than a dozen trucks/plows in Atlanta was like having nothing even with 3-4 inches. Add a hundred thousand cars and it’s not the unpopulated north country.
Saw a vid of a 30 car pileup in NH. Road appeared to be slushy, not frozen. Stuff happens.
I have driven fifty miles round trip on solid ice in South Carolina more than once back in the sixties without problems. I did it in old fashioned, rear wheel drive, V-8 powered cars without any kind of snow tires, chains or limited slip rear axle. I also did it on roads with nearly no traffic. If you know how to handle accelerator and brakes you can drive on ice but you cannot do it if there is heavy traffic, no one can do it in traffic without chains, you simply cannot stop quickly enough. Four wheel drive will get you going but it is no help in stopping quickly.
I owned a 1978 Jeep Cherokee Quadratrac which I drove around for two weeks and longer on icy roads the last time we had a really deep mix of sleet, freezing rain and snow here. I pulled my optometrist out of a spot where he was stuck two different times during that period. I had no trouble moving but after I thought it was all gone I came down a stretch of back road in the dark and hit a long stretch that was still solid ice for half a mile. I met another vehicle and in trying to avoid hitting him ran my Cherokee into the ditch and it would not move because it was tilted too far. I was lucky enough to find someone at a house across the road who pulled me with a long chain attached to a pickup truck. As soon as he took up the slack and tilted the Cherokee back the other way it came out of the ditch. I would have had no trouble had I not been unfortunate enough to meet a single oncoming car on the ice. As soon as I turned my wheels slightly to the right to try to get out of a rut in the ice I went straight into the ditch. Had I stayed in the rut I almost certainly would have hit the other car.
That said, I have lived pretty much everywhere. Including a recent stint, where I lost my mind, and agreed to live in Raleigh, NC for two years.
Not in a million years would I get on the roads after, even, an inch of snow in Raleigh. People who are not used to snow and don't know how to drive in snow are DANGEROUS. It's utter mayhem on Raligh roads in bad weather. Car wrecks all over.
Shut it down and wait a day or two until it's 55 degrees again.
Are you series? That’s quite a feat!
Man...you soft Yankees had taters n stuff. We had to cross bayous barefoot and watch for gators-and in 100degrees with skeeters big as your thumb. If we were hungry we had to kill somethin to eat. Crawfish are good boiled but raw they`re mean critters. LOL
We were so poor, all we had were pictures of taters, torn from soiled magazines at the city dump. On a hot, humid summer night, we’d have to collect millions of teeny-tiny skeeters for the next morning’s breakfast breakfast, along with cardboard crackers and light-colored mud we’d pretend was cheese. Crawfish? That’d be a delicacy, even alive, compared to the well-aged roadkill we ate on cardboard buns. Heh...
One of the main issues was all the 18 wheeler wrecks. The ice made the roads impassible to anything minus 4 wheel regardless of ones driving ability.
I saw that here in ATL about a week ago or so. He was about to turn onto Peachtree, I was on it, near Phipps Plaza (very upscale mall).
Snow is easy. Smooth ice. I like to see anyone drive on it with just two rubber wheels turning.
Our local radio station in Chattanooga posted it on their Facebook site. LOL I avoid Atlanta at all costs. Chattanooga is bad enough.
I hate having to transit Chattanooga coming in from I-24 and having to deal with traffic backed up all the way to the I-59S exit. The only saving grace is being able to stop at Sugar’s Ribs.
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.