Did it just snow in Atlanta and it made the roads fall apart? People are talking about 8 hours to drive 20 miles. What the hell happened down there?

Friends in SC are freaking as well.

I guess the way we look at them and their freakouts is how Minnesota/Colorado/other massive snow getting states look at Maryland when we get 10" dumped on us and kids are off school for a week.

It defies explanation.

I think most people here are just incredibly stupid.

Some bridges iced over and caused wrecks, I guess, but other than that the roads were pretty much fine.

Day after, and some people are still stuck from yesterday afternoon.

NOW local roads are pretty much all ice. And it looks like it won't get above freezing today.

I've been enjoying pics from friends down there of their kids playing in the snow with what pitiful winter gear they have, but I saw a blog site purporting to show the nightmarish gridlock, and ... honestly it looked like every rush hour, but with snow. Most of the "traffic nightmare" shots I've seen aren't conveying the problem very well.

It just happened too fast and not necessarily in the places where they said it would.

We pulled our trucks off the road around noon because shit was getting crazy up in Cobb County. One guy who works for me got home at 12:30 AM--he met up with his wife and they set out for home around 3:00--and he only lives about 20 minutes from work.

My brother was stuck on Lakewood Freeway for 2+ hours because cars couldnt get up a hill and this was in the middle of the day, early afternoon.

Basically, it hit at the wrong time of the day and its a big fucking city. I hate the second guessing and Monday Morning Quarterbacking going on because A. People bitch when they close the schools and then nothing happens and B. A lot of these same people also bitch about the government doing too much (until they need the government). Horrifying stories out there and also amazing stories of people opening up their homes, sharing hotel rooms, people driving to interstate overpasses with their cars full of bottled water and snacks and then walking down on to the highway to take stuff to stranded people. Amazing stuff.

i hear you, Richmond isn't really any better about the complaining. My kids haven't had more than 3 days of school in January, I think. Last night they waited until 10PM to cancel school, when everyone really already knew that they had to, and there's certainly no real reason to plan for snowplows in the budget when it snows only twice a year and really only black people and white yuppie scum live in the city.

Still, your brethren really fucked the handling of this one up. Traffic in that city is insane, maybe there wasn't a better way to execute it...but there probably was. Definitely was. It looks worse than hurricane sandy on the news, and dick goes deeper than the snow you got. What if you'd gotten all 4 inches?!

Its more about the ice than the snow, but I dont disagree with you.

I guess I encountered a lot of infuriating and - for all appearances - just outright dumb behavior yesterday that had me characterizing the whole thing as just a critical mass of collective stupidity.

In retrospect there was obviously a lot more to it, and you can't really blame schools for not closing prematurely after the last two false alarms. (No snow the last two times it was forecast, but this time definitely seemed to have a lot more certainty to it.)

In general my driving experience in Atlanta is that of feeling like I'm caught between barely cognizant, oblivious people (on their phones or what have you) and super over-aggressive racecar drivers hellbent on getting wherever they're going 2 minutes sooner than anyone else. Yesterday felt like an amplified version of this with people in the latter category causing a whole lot of wrecks early on and then people in the former category, suddenly aware of their surroundings, in full panic mode, driving 5 mph with their blinkers on, creating sporadic, impenetrable roadblocks on what would otherwise be open, drive-able roads.

Also, I may have better-than-average tires on my car.

The effects are being felt everywhere...

I can't really make heads or tails of it from up here. I know there are no plows, I fucking grew up there, but still, when I think about the actual precipitation and the results, my head goes sideways.

Something went way goddam wrong, that's for sure.

I think the main culprit is the fact that it was supposed to hit further south - for two days Montgomery, Troy, New Orleans, Mobile, Jackson, etc were under the impression WE ALL GONNA DIE.

Coupled with the last two major false alarms - basically they said it would be like it was yesterday, except it was 60+ degrees on D Day.

Birmingham (as usual) was probably a worse fail than Atlanta, but ATL gets all the publicity, because: ATLANTA.

The few things they could have done:
banned trucks (they actually need to do this altogether on the connector)
released school buses first
assessed the situation and probably closed roads at that point, and told people to just stay put.

The SMALL part of me that says this was a stupidity thing, is the people who think "I KNOWhow to drive, it's these other morons who don't" which is 100% of the population.

I was smart enough to decamp for my dad's early....and now I have surrogates to take care of my kids while I bang back Blue Chimays and Good People IPAs.

I worked outdoors yesterday. -20 wind chill. 2 pairs socks (one of those pairs thermal), 1000g of Thinsulate boots, fleece-lined jeans, 4 layers on upper body, both toe warmers and hand warmers (those crappy activated-charcoal ones), face mask, hat & gloves. Still thought I was going to die.

what is this fucking sophie's choice on the right?

Can't help but chuckle, even though there's probably an awful backstory.

Yeah, that scene played out all over the city. Lots of people stranded out in low teen temps and getting shelter wherever they could. Our neighbor let a lady crash at her place and I gave a girl a half gallon of gas from my lawn mower gas can because she was freaking out and didn't think she'd make it to the gas station. A MARTA bus spun out and got stuck on a main road a block from my house which redirected some traffic through our neighborhood sometime around 10pm. Thankfully a couple of neighbors had sand and we were able to sand the small "hill" on our street so people could get through.

Still really trying to process how bad it got and how things just completely fucking fell apart. Took me about an hour and a half to get home (normal commute is about 20-25 minutes) and feel pretty lucky about that in hindsight. I caught some breaks taking surface streets home.

It's a combination of a lot of things I guess. I am sort of annoyed at all of the Kasim Reed bashing. He made some mistakes but he's the mayor of a relatively small part of metro atlanta. There are over a dozen other mayors inside the perimeter alone. Everyone played a part.

I will say it can't be glossed over how quick things deteriorated. It went from snowing to sheets of ice on the streets in less than 2 hours. Add in several million people dumping into the streets all at the same time, who don't have experience driving in those conditions, well, you get what we got.


Also, to the people who kept calling in to sportstalk shows during the traffic jam saying, "Yo, I'm from upstate New York and this is ridiculous. Come on people, it's like two freaking inches."..........fucking kill yourself or go the fuck back up there. You were part of the problem.

makes you realize how fucking insane/impossible a mass evacuation of a big city would be in case of a major emergency or disaster

Seriously. It would be chaos.

I mean, there are certainly some jokes to be made for how this all went down but if you're on a major interstate in the middle lane, completely blocked in, nothing moving, no solid information coming in, you're running out of gas, and you have young kids in the car with the temps dropping rapidly......what do you do?

And I don't even want to think about being stuck on an Interstate for 12 hours and the bathroom situation.

Was it last year or 2 years ago when people just abandoned their cars in that Chicago storm?

Trucks are already banned on the Connector unless they have business ITP: That's why 285 can be a truly frightening place sometimes, finding yourself walled in by 8 or 10 tractor trailers.

See you next summer, Atlanta

People in my Facebook feed complaining about the "unnecessary" school closings.

I'm at a loss.

Left work at 5.

Easiest commute I've ever had.

Work closed tomorrow. First beer just cracked.