Alabama/Atlanta Snowpocalypse: When meteorology goes terribly wrong

Quick story. Quick as I can make it.

I think it was 1987 or so, a Friday night, we heard that we were going to get socked the next day. The SE suggested that I do a lot of the Sunday pages on Friday night in case we can't get in. Being a jackass, I told him I liked doing the Sunday section on Saturday night. He shrugged his shoulders and left.

Next day, the state police stopped us at the entrance to Interstate 83 and told us we weren't getting through 20 inches of snow. Turned us around to home.

For the next nine months, I was handed just about every shit assignment on Earth.

 

Making fun of how southerners deal with snow misses the basic point that the roads get worse with 1-2 inches of snow than they do with 5-6 inches.

First off, southern roads are never salted. In the north, when snow starts falling in late January, the roads have already been salted a bunch of times. Leftover salt from previous saltings serve to start the melting process. In the south, that doesn't happen.

What does happen is that cars driving over the snow start some melting. But because there's no salt on the roads and the temps are below freezing, that melting that occurred leads to icing. And anyone who's seen it knows that the small snowfalls lead to icing much more than the big snowfalls do. Then add in the fact that the drivers aren't experienced at dealing with snow and ice and slippery roads.

I'll be jealous of southerners and their weather most of winter, but I won't make fun of them for not being able to deal with the shit they got yesterday.

 

Syracuse football coach Scott Shafer gets into the act:

https://twitter.com/Coach_Shafer/status/428608052074647552

As EDSBS' Spencer Hall then pointed out, Syracuse lost 56-0 at Georgia Tech last year.

 

Crikey. You could walk home in less time than that.

 

I bet some of these states have elaborate plans for hurricanes which make landfall just as infrequently as snow storms hit these regions. If this is going to be the result of having no plans and at least a minimum of snow/ice melting infrastructure in place you would think they would wake up and realize that there's a benefit to investing in some of this stuff.

And I'm not talking about big trucks and plows either. I'm mainly talking about having a supply of salt and slag and retrofitting current local government vehicles to be able to spread the stuff on main thoroughfares (even in the north, especially in financially hard-hit cities not all roads get treated). You can store the salt in salt domes.

 

It seems like schools and such would fall under the "non-essential" category. If there's a chance of a weather disaster, just call it off and make it up later.

Posted this on another thread a few weeks ago, but it's interesting how in some states where I have worked, prep sporting events would get called off any time there was a little ice or snow. In some other states, we could have a foot on new snow and they would still load up the buses and off they'd go.... 200 miles for a wrestling meet or basketball game.

 

As for the metro areas, some of these places just have too many people and too many cars, regardless of what the weather is. I dread driving in Atlanta, Dallas or Chicago on just about any weekday. I imagine Los Angeles and some other cities are the same. That's a big reason I prefer mid-size markets.

 

Yeah, I have a friend whose kids were right in the middle of it. It sounds like a nightmare.

What's sad is that so many people don't adjust their driving to the weather and this is a problem in Denver, Chicago or anywhere where driving in snow is commonplace. I hate driving in snow and I've lived in places where it snows for most of the last two decades.

 

It's not hard to handle 3 inches of snow. Drive slow. Pay attention. Be courteous. Don't be in such a damn hurry.
Most accidents in the snow are from people accelerating or trying to stop short. It's not hard to avoid doing that.
Why would you laugh about a hurricane destroying homes and ruining people's lives? We're talking about a dusting of snow and accidents that could have been prevented if people didn't drive like assholes.

 

When I was younger, the city put plows on the garbage trucks as a regular and routine part of the plowing operation. I haven't seen that in forever, because now that they've learned that salt is at least as important as plowing, all the plows are now on dump trucks that both plow and salt.

What fell in the south yesterday did not need to be plowed, it needed to be salted. With construction that is routinely done, I would think that most southern cities have a number of dump trucks that could be used for salting. And, of course, the salting needs to be done before the snow falls, not after. Southern cities might do well to spend just a little bit of money retrofitting their dump trucks with salt spreaders and have a reasonably small supply of salt on hand. It would end up being cheaper than shutting the cities down for days.

 

Oh, absolutely. He's the gospel when it comes to news, my friend.

 

What part of "Something like this happens only every 20 or 30 years down here, so there's no infrastructure in place to deal with it" did you not understand?

You can give all the snow-driving tips you want and it won't do a damn bit of good in this situation. Just like if someone from California were to give you tips on dealing with earthquakes.