Alabama/Atlanta Snowpocalypse: When meteorology goes terribly wrong

Yeah, this was hardly the first time the local meteorologists have shit the bed as far as guessing the output of a storm.

If it happens in Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Philly or almost anywhere else in the US, it's shrugged off as one of those things.

In the south, this translates into SNOWPOCALYPSE 2014.

This is the same region where the parkas come out if it gets below 50 degrees and school gets canceled if it gets close to 32 degrees.

I'm sympathetic, don't get me wrong... I had a few friends in some very scary situations as a result of this ordeal. But I also understand why people are looking at what happened in Atlanta and rolling their eyes and laughing.

 

That Eagles-Lions game happened on a Sunday.

If it happened on a Monday with that kind of missed forecast, with schools and businesses on full-go, it would have been bad. Not as bad, because Philly has more snow equipment and better population density and a strong public transportation system, but it would have been bad. It would have had nothing to do with whether people "knew how to drive" in the snow and ice.

 

Yeah, I agree with that. I was just noting it as an example how meteorologists, no matter where they are, can get it very wrong.

 

That "sorry but I'm not coming in" line might work if there's already ice and snow on the ground and you can tell the boss your street's iced over or you can't even get your car out of the driveway, but I'm not so sure it would go over very well if nothing has fallen yet.

I can see someone telling his boss, "I'm not coming in because they're predicting a winter storm sometime this afternoon," and the boss replying, "Tell you what. Don't bother coming in anymore."

 

Even when it's nice out, Atlanta may have the worst traffic in the country.

 

The bolded part is pretty much BS.

 

The weather guys got it right on the nose here. On Monday, they were advising that the schools stay out Tuesday and Wednesday, and businesses not open, and most of them heeded the warning. Turns out we had three hours of freezing rain before 8 AM Tuesday morning, followed by a day's worth of a light, but steady shower of icy snow pellets. Everything, I mean everything, was shut down. I was iced in at my house for two solid days, and ended up putting out the Sports pages Tuesday and Wednesday from my kitchen table. I know we Southerners get some ribbing about how we deal with true wintry conditions, a lot of it well-deserved, but in this case even the Yankees in our midst had trouble with it.

 

This is true, and the root of the problem. Lots of cars + badly designed roads + relatively rare weather event = disaster.

 

Where is 'here'?

 

Ice storms are the worst form of winter weather anywhere north, south or parts unknown. We had an ice storm in Mass. before Christmas in 2008 starting about 15 miles west of where I live and people were without power until after New Year's.

 

South Mississippi.