Terrible scene. Atlanta snow then instant ice rink.

Warning self-aggrandizing northerners! Please avoid the Southern US at all costs.

The Southern driver has been known to run summer tires 363 days per year in non-rusty 30 year old import sports cars, without high taxes and annual inspections for safety. These factors, combined with the abnormally low cost of living and booming economy have enabled legions of incapable drivers to buzz around in countless lightweight, rear wheel drive, vintage sports cars.

(We don't have temperate weather, some of the best driving roads in the country and a limitless-supply of non-rusty beaters. It's all lies!)

Tyler H wrote: Warning self-aggrandizing northerners! Please avoid the Southern US at all costs. The Southern driver has been known to run summer tires 363 days per year in non-rusty 30 year old import sports cars, without high taxes and annual inspections for safety. These factors, combined with the abnormally low cost of living and booming economy have enables legions of incapable drivers to buzz around in countless lightweight, rear wheel drive, vintage sports cars. (We don't have temperate weather, some of the best driving roads in the country and a limitless-supply of non-rusty beaters. It's all lies!)

Part of the problem with Atlanta is three a whole bunch of people there and tis a great big hub with lots of poeple coming through it. Some of those passing trhough may even be some of the great ice driving northerners. If you throw jsut a few idiots into the mix, this is what can happen.

Bobzilla

The report you quoted mentioned sand trucks and snow plows. It didn't mention brine trucks. I don't think snow plows would have helped much. I doubt Atlanta had enough salt and sand to treat all of I-285, I-75, I-85, I-20, GA 40 and all of the other main roads.

We only had ONE INCH of snow here (NW SC) and it still locked everything up. I got home just fine and to work just fine this morning. But there were still asshats driving 70mph down the road when others were going 45-50.

But wait! There are still feel good stories out there too!

Chick-fil-a saves the day!

http://www.myfoxny.com/Story/24574965/chick-fil-a-feeds-stranded-drivers

It's apparent that many people are truly ignorant about how bad Atlanta drivers are in dry weather, let alone snow and ice. Yesterday saw a few hundred thousand of them let loose on the streets - all at the same time. Schools, businesses and governments all shut down (at the same time) and sent their mindless minions out to battle the elements.

While the NWS issued a winter storm warning at 3:30AM, they projected the worst weather to effect the middle and southern portions of the state. That's where the bulk of the equipment was staged. Forecasting isn't an exact science and the state, which is responsible for clearing the interstates, was caught off guard. By the time everyone realized the conditions were worse than predicted, the damage was done. The city compounded the problem but Atlanta is a city that can't even synchronize its' traffic lights let alone co-ordinate the shut down of schools and services.

I don't know what is more fun, the Wednesday morning quarterbacking by people full of themselves or the locals playing the blame game because they didn't heed the warnings they'd been hearing for days.

Long post later. Short version:

1. I made it 40 miles on snow & ice in a 400HP RWD car on summer tires on untreated roads/bridges no problem. Then, I got 1/2 mile from my house, going as slow as I could, while maintaining enough speed to get up the next big hill, when two berkeleytard rednecks in their brodozers cut me off...at the same time, some other berkeleytard decides to ride 5' off my bumper. I ease of the gas, while cletus in front of me nails the gas and backs his E36 M3 pile into the ditch. Sweet. I ease on the throttle and turn right up the "dead-man's-curve" entry to our neighborhood, and check my mirror to see captain berkeleystick tail-gaiter slide off into another ditch. Got home safe & sound, unfortunately finally experience some of the teeth-shattering wheel-hop the V is known for along the way. :(

2. berkeley politicians. The whole miserable berkeleying lot of 'em. I expected the Mayor of ATL to point fingers and refuse to accept any responsibility, but F*CK Nathan Deal, for berkeleying real. Motherberkeleyer did a press conference today, and basically said this was the berkeleying best they could do, while blaming "mother nature" and the national weather service for having people stuck in their cars on I75 for 18 hours. REALLY!? You E36 M3heads couldn't treat 1 or 2 lanes of 75 for 50 miles north & south bound!?!? berkeleying REALLY?

I suggest every pissed off citizen of GA send a bag of berkeleying dicks to the capitol building.

So yeah, stupid berkeleying people on the road. Stupid berkeleying people at the capitol. Use the goddamned sense you were born with, people.

/rant...for now.

Take a city that has arguably the worst traffic in the U.S. on a sunny day, mix in a nasty spell of black ice (which is tough to deal with regardless of where you live), add a bit of govt. incompetence and voila, you have armageddon!

Hopefully this nasty situation will spur more folks to enroll in driver's schools. Currently 90% of drivers don't know what the Hell they are doing when the roads are dry---- herein lies the main problem.

Yes, the South is much less prepared to deal with this than say....Duluth Minnesota. That said, massive pile-ups due to ice occur across the country. When I lived in CO, there was a massive pile-up on Rt. 25 (40 cars or so) Folks in CO are totally used to driving in Winter conditions, and most are plenty prepared for it. Sometimes mother nature is a muther.

I know nothing about Atlanta except the few times I've visited and I came away with the certain knowledge I'd never live there. But I wonder if maybe Atlanta could, next time something like this happens, do a staged evacuation as in: call to evacuate certain areas at certain times, starting kind of early?

Here's how it's happened every_time in recent memory:

Meteorologists predict 8 hours of snow. They tell people to stay home, treat the roads, close the schools, etc. We get flurries. This happens two or three times from December to February. Then, they get a little hesitant about predicting snowmageddon, and here it comes, and people are caught off guard.

The fact that NO roads, to my knowledge, were treated is inexcusable.

When they predict snow, I look at the radar. Any berkeleying idiot with a device connected to the internet...or a TV with the weather channel, could've said "Oh E36 M3. Here comes the snow." As I did.

berkeley Kassim Reid and Nathan Deal. People are F*CKING_PISSED, and they have a right to be. WE paid for those trucks. USE_THEM for berkeley's sake.

Meanwhile, they're all patting themselves on the back for what a great job they're doing cleaning up the mess that they could've prevented.

IS it too late to send Sherman down to burn Atlanta? MAybe if they'd kept some of them fires burning it would be so cold.

In reply to poopshovel:

The weather channel was too busy running the video clip of Jim Cantore kneeing someone in the balls to care about the rest of it.

LOL Bob

+1 for poopshovel.

I'm south of Macon, two hours south of Atlanta. We got a little over an inch and things are pretty well shutdown. Macon is the third largest town in the state and they have ONE spreader truck for the county. For the most part people here were proactive, schools closed Tuesday and today, business shut down, so its been okay.

I had a friend in Atlanta that finally got home after 17 hours. Finally abandoned his car and spent the night in a Publix. The forecasters were already issuing warnings Sunday, if I lived in Atown I'd be out for politician blood.

In reply to ultraclyde:

...and according to Deal, the new story is that ALL the plows were down your way, because that's where ALL the snow was "supposed" to fall. We had a little over 3" here. No plows. No roads/overpasses treated.

wvumtnbkr wrote: Preperation is key. Hopefully people learn from this.

One thing that can be shown over and over about Americans especially: When it comes to dealing with weather, we never learn. I don't mean about snow in the south, or heat waves, or hurricanes, or anything specific. I mean all of it.

I'll add that DC area is just as bad in snow. VDOT pulls out so many trucks that you'd think we were in Alaska or something, for an inch of forecasted snow. On my road the SALT is literally deeper than the snow that fell last night. Probably 2-3" of salt on each side of the road. And this area is such a mix of people you have people from NE or Michigan driving fast in the snow (because they can, and they have good tires), then you have local morons on their cell phone in their M3 also driving fast because hey, it's an M3!! Soccer moms in big SUVs ("it's 4x4, so I can go fast in snow!"), and then transplants from the south, or from India, or from Mexico, many of which appear to never have ever seen snow or cold weather in general and will literally ditch their cars on the side of the road when the first flakes start sticking.

Americans' memory for weather-related issues only lasts as long as that weather remains the headline on the local news (so far we get 15 minutes of "news" about how "it's cold here" and 15 minutes of whatever else is going on in the area)

Prediction: winter 2015 there will be another massive winter clusterberkeley in the south, and everyone will say "well how are we to expect this???"

here in DC they have moved to the "massive over-reaction to any weather" mode. And then the one time they don't react at all, the weather throws a curve and dumps a foot lol....

Ice is ice, no fun to drive on. My commute was the same yesterday morning at 4am and there were cars and trucks in the ditches. NWOhio was prepared, but people try to drive normally and it just doesn't work. There was a picture from NW Indiana on I94 at demotte/laporte that showed 40+ semis/cars crammed together in a place that ALWYS gets this.

Boortz summed it up on the radio tonight (paraphrasing:) "When you're in the position of making the call on this sort of thing (school closings, road prep, etc,) the best you can do is expect and prepare for the worst possible scenario, and thank your lucky stars when it doesn't happen."

I told my employees not to bother showing up...even though there wasn't a flake in the sky when we opened. Not worth the risk.

These shiny happy people did NOTHING to prepare for this E36 M3. It's shameful. They should've closed schools, anticipating the worst, and not giving a E36 M3 about people pissing and moaning about any "over-reaction" or whatever. That's their job. And they failed miserably. Heads should roll.

http://myfox8.com/2014/01/29/chipper-jones-rescues-ex-teammate-stranded-in-atlanta-snowstorm/

Former Atlanta Braves star Chipper Jones played the role of rescuer on Tuesdsay when his ex-teammate Freddie Freeman was stranded in the snow. About 3 inches of snow fell on metro Atlanta on Tuesday, causing major traffic backups and forcing some major roads to complete shutdown. Freddie Freeman left Turner Field on Tuesday afternoon and spent several hours trapped on the highway before his ex-teammate and friend came to his rescue.

Real America Hero.

(Gayslur) but still, cool. There are a couple awesome dudes in my neighborhood who run around on ATV's helping people out/warning people "There's some idiot parked at the bottom if the hill who's waiting on a tow-truck"

In reply to MrChaos:

Moral of the story, don't berkeley with Chipper Jones. Snowfall can't protect you from him.

Poopshovel - Down OUR way??!! Pretty sure I haven't seen hide nor hair of a snowplow anywhere NEAR here. You know if there had been a snowplow active in Macon GA that every local news crew would have been filming it. What a load of crap.

I did hear the forecasts ahead of this were worse for us than for you guys, but they also said with every breath there was a ton of uncertainty in the models. There is NO excuse for those guys not being more prepared.

In reply to ultraclyde:

I am agreeing with you, and sharing your frustration.

+1 to the poopshovel. GDOT girl (quite attractive) was on the news on Monday saying they learned the lesson from 2011 storm. Uh, no, I doubt it.

irish44j wrote:

wvumtnbkr wrote: Preperation is key. Hopefully people learn from this.

One thing that can be shown over and over about Americans especially: When it comes to dealing with weather, we never learn. I don't mean about snow in the south, or heat waves, or hurricanes, or anything specific. I mean all of it. I'll add that DC area is just as bad in snow. VDOT pulls out so many trucks that you'd think we were in Alaska or something, for an inch of forecasted snow. On my road the SALT is literally deeper than the snow that fell last night. Probably 2-3" of salt on each side of the road. And this area is such a mix of people you have people from NE or Michigan driving fast in the snow (because they can, and they have good tires), then you have local morons on their cell phone in their M3 also driving fast because hey, it's an M3!! Soccer moms in big SUVs ("it's 4x4, so I can go fast in snow!"), and then transplants from the south, or from India, or from Mexico, many of which appear to never have ever seen snow or cold weather in general and will literally ditch their cars on the side of the road when the first flakes start sticking. Americans' memory for weather-related issues only lasts as long as that weather remains the headline on the local news (so far we get 15 minutes of "news" about how "it's cold here" and 15 minutes of whatever else is going on in the area) Prediction: winter 2015 there will be another massive winter clusterberkeley in the south, and everyone will say "well how are we to expect this???" here in DC they have moved to the "massive over-reaction to any weather" mode. And then the one time they don't react at all, the weather throws a curve and dumps a foot lol....

Yep. See it here every damn time it snows/rains/whatever. People, in general, are just berkeleying stupid. They don't want to spend the time to actually drive, they would rather text/talk/surf/etc rather than paying attention to what is going on around them.

Bobzilla wrote: Yep. See it here every damn time it snows/rains/whatever. People, in general, are just berkeleying stupid. They don't want to spend the time to actually drive, they would rather text/talk/surf/etc rather than paying attention to what is going on around them.

new idea: Winter weather driving app for phone. Interface with OBD2 and "coach" driver real time with regards to throttle application, brakes etc.

Maybe they'll listen, since its on their phone.

ProDarwin wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: Yep. See it here every damn time it snows/rains/whatever. People, in general, are just berkeleying stupid. They don't want to spend the time to actually drive, they would rather text/talk/surf/etc rather than paying attention to what is going on around them.

*new idea*: Winter weather driving app for phone. Interface with OBD2 and "coach" driver real time with regards to throttle application, brakes etc. Maybe they'll listen, since its on their phone.

You may be on to something....