As much as four inches of snow fell over parts of the South today, leaving a wake of destruction in its path — thousands of flights were canceled, Georgia is currently in a state of emergency, and students are stranded in schools across multiple states.
Four inches of snow and the whole damn state closes down.
Commuters in Atlanta are still trying to make their way home; at this point, some of them have now been on the road for more than 19 hours. With all of the city's major highways and roads in gridlock, many drivers took to CVSs and grocery stores for overnight shelter.
Made it to CVS on W Paces Ferry. People sleeping in every aisle, using maxi pads as pillows. pic.twitter.com/NLBhAYZMCr
— Jaime Sarrio (@JaimeSarrio) January 29, 2014
Here are just some of the horrendous stories of people being trapped for up to twelve hours in their cars on the highways.I have a friend who's truck has been hit by 6 cars. She has two kids in the car and trying to get to 2 more at daycare. She's by riverside dr by the Waffle House and publix. 911 is busy. Any suggestions???
is anyone near the QT station on Roswell Rd and Canton? My 74 year old father is trapped there in his car. He has been in his car for 12 hours now and is unable to go anywhere
Can someone tell me if there is shelter or assistance near 85 south from half mile from Clairmont exit. I have a friend with 2 very small children and they are almost out of gas.
My grandparents are stranded on 75/85 near Tech. My grandfather is on a battery operated heart pump. He has at least one extra set of batteries for the heart pump. I am very concerned now and road conditions do not seem to be improving.
Trying to get help to a Cobb County Special Ed bus driver and her 3 students... they have been on the road for hours with no food and have to go to the restroom. Theses are special needs kids and an older woman.
My husband is near exit 244 in downtown Atlanta. He is almost out of gas. Can anyone help. He has been on the road 10 hours .
My dad has a heart condition, feels faint, going on 11 hours and almost no food today. He thinks he may be have chest pain and he doesn't have his medication. How can I get him help???
That is only a taste.
It was so bad that a Walking Dead fan posted this comparison on Reddit.
In the meantime in Alaska we are in our second week of unseasonably warm weather which is confusing our bear population as well as the plants.
So can some Republican tell me again, how is it that climate change is fake?
My husband, born and raised in Minneapolis, thought it was pretty funny. It isn’t, though, and I feel sorry for those folks. I’m guessing there were plenty of people relieving themselves alongside the cars and feeling no shame. What else could they do?
ReplyDeleteI'm in MI, where we have had record snow since early December, and we have not been above 20 degrees in three weeks. Schools closed for wind chills at 30 below on Tuesday. Roads are in good shape because we deal, but the cold is awful, and no break in sight.
ReplyDeleteYup, no climate change happening. God is just mad about abortion, women working outside the home, and contraception, right, Repubs? Oh, and God never endorsed a black man for US President, also, too....
Being here in Michigan.......and just barely able to make it out of my driveway,the cold snap was just a slap in the face......heartily endorse your second paragraph,but,turn up the sarcasm a little more....please.
DeleteYes, I am in Michigan in what was just rated by Accuweather as the snowiest college town in the country; no one else is even close. We are at 142 inches already and plenty more to come. And it is darn cold.
DeleteI feel bad for people in areas that normally don't have to deal with snow and ice removal, or worry about insulated homes or warm clothing. I wouldn't think of mocking them.
As for climate change, every bonehead yammering on about the cold does not understand that 1) weather is not climate and 2) it is only winter right now in the northern hemisphere. I have yet to hear any of the fox dolts ask anyone in Australia (summer right now) what they think of climate change.
Only feeling compassion here........
ReplyDeleteWhat was interesting to an outsider is watching the justified anger of the Weather Channel folk at the foolishness of Georgiea's state and Atlanta's leadership. The mayor of Baton Rouge LA (an African American) was interviewed and he talked about all the preparations his city had made because of the NWS and Weather Channel warnings: overpasses and bridges and major highways had been brined before the storm hit, schools were closed, people were advised to stay home rather than go to work, etc. Bravo to Baton Rouge! In Atlanta none of that occurred and we see the results. The mayor of Atlanta had the nerve to tell the Weather Channel guy that money is lost when businesses close. Well, how much was lost because no one could get home from work - in many cases for well over twelve hours. The NWS is there to help us. These GOP-ers, who are so anxious not to believe in science, had better start changing their minds.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
Beaglemom is right. Here in southwestern VA, ALL the schools had God's Good Sense to leave the kids at home. The local TV stations have experienced forecasters who know this sort of thing, and we have plenty of salt, snow plows and winter preps.
DeleteRegarding Atlanta, NBC's Al Roker was furious at the stupid mayor and stupider governor for ignoring the warnings issued 21 HOURS ahead of the first flake. You ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS err on the side of caution, especially when you don't have the resources to handle this kind of weather.
Yep. Blaming lack of "correct" forecasts was another foo-foo in GA. Funny thing is, I got the 3:38 am Tuesday morning forecast updating severity of possible outcomes. Yet Deal/Reed said they didn't know.
Delete*rolls eyes*
PMom_GA
I grew up in a small town in SC. I was there for the storm because my girlfriend was scheduled for cataract surgery on Tuesday, the day the storm was supposed to hit us there.
DeleteThe storm was scheduled to hit us beginning around 5. All the schools were closed by noon and some weren't even opened! The County offices were closed as well and even the library pulled out.
I have to say, though, we were lucky down here. The predicted ICE storm didn't materialize as badly as they had predicted. That is NOT a dig at the Weather people! It is merely a statement of gratitude.
I can't imagine what those poor stuck people (or any of us, for that matter) would have gone through if there had been no power as well!
Once in a while even SC does something right! But I think that falls under the blind squirrel rule.
It's understandable when natural disasters like earthquakes and tornadoes hit a city or state and things become chaotic. There is no way to predict those kinds of events.
DeleteHowever, there is a 24-hour weather channel BASED IN ATLANTA that gave plenty of notice to anyone who wanted to listen. There is no excuse for the Governor and Mayor to have not taken precautions, especially with schools, when they know they don't have the equipment to deal with that kind of weather!
I live in western NY, where we're used to cold, snow and ice. Even so, school closing announcements were made the night before our temperatures were predicted to hit 25 to 30 below on January 7. No children were made to wait at the bus stops in those frigid temperatures.
One life lost makes taking chances with dangerous weather a very costly choice.
What got me was leaving the kids in school overnight. My heart went out to every parent, child, and teacher who had to endure this separation, when there WAS no good reason for it in the first place.
DeleteAnd the suffering those stuck in traffic had to endure is unjustifiable.
We had 13 inches of snow and a month of mostly below zero temperatures. But we're a big city used to getting hit by snow storms, we're used to driving in it, and we have contingency plans in place to make sure people get to where they need to go.
"So can some Republican tell me again, how is it that climate change is fake?"
ReplyDeleteOh Come ON, Gryphen! You know as well as everyone else they will say this is evidence that the eco-system is NOT warming!
These idiots seem to think that scientific fact is like statistics, allowing them to say anything they want simply by rewording it.
AND you also know they believe that if they admit to even ONE thing "ta libruls" do their entire foundation will collapse!
I live about 90 miles from Atlanta. I am just extremely happy we didn't see the fiasco play out here as it did there. And I haven't been able to reach my cousin, who lives near there.
Palin was more interested in Chick-fil-A than the plight of those stranded.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/428595152337502208
Once again, not to let a catastrophe go to waste, Sarah Pigpen rears her bewigged skull and WISHES to have been a victim.
DeleteAnything for attention and free food.
As one who lives smack dab in disasterville, the problems come down to one thing & one thing only: lack of communication between authorities.
ReplyDeleteTraffic volume very similar to rush hour, so what else is new? A little mix of wintry mix and everyone trying to get somewhere at same time.
If all those "in charge" had bothered to TALK to one another before announcing closures & dismissals, a significant piece of the problem could have been avoided.
"What we had was a failure to communicate."
Even Reed (mayor) said there were "independent decisions" made, but he refused to say the "why"of that happening. Answer is "turf wars". Reed is a D, Deal/all state agencies are R's.
Bottom line is no matter who had authority over what operation/segment of the entire region, no one talked about plans or decisions each was making. First rule of emergency management is getting all "team"members together. Georgia - local & state FAILED.
PMom_GA
You can't blame the republican party,you can however blame science deniers and just plain ole goobers who VOTE for this party. Republican politicians know that the majority of their base are superstitious and frightened, yearning to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear, you know, the past that exists in fantasy and Cleaverville. Anyone in their RIGHT MIND who would cast a vote for a fellow like Mitt Romney, knowing the incredible, and I mean incredible Land Of Oz that the Mormon faith holds to be reality well Christ all Friday, what can you expect? Republican candidates are only as cynical as their base allows them to be. It is only in a state of intellectual void that a shaman like Sarah Palin or a feral beaver like Michelle Bachman could not only exist but flourish and succeed,albeit briefly. It is an apocalyptic sitcom and here on Skull Island we, the subjects of Kong, sit enraptured.
ReplyDeleteEveryone, and I mean everyone is Atlanta has to share the blame for what happened. No one showed any concern for the upcoming storm, made no preparations or emergency planning whatsoever. Really......you're on heart pumps, or you have children in the car (at school, daycare, whatever) and you just go about your normal daily business?
ReplyDeleteGranted the elected officials dropped the ball here, but that does not relieve the people from making decisions on their own and displaying even a minimal amount of common-sense.
I live in a remote area in the mountains of WY. Poor planning and a complete disregard for the weather gets you killed. Period. Respect that or suffer the consequences.
I do not have any sympathy for any adult that was stranded. I do have a huge amount of disgust for what they needlessly subjected children to.
Storm? there were a couple of inches of snow, that's it. That hardly constitutes a snow storm in anyone's terms. You don't even need snowplows for that much.
Delete7:43, when people are completely ignorant about driving in stuff like that, it scares them. And when you add that ice had come first, traction is pretty weak.
DeleteI will grant you that in a large portion of the country this was not anything to even comment on, but for that area of the country - and I grew up in the southeast - it was a big deal.
Yeah, a few inches of snow is nothing to worry about to most people. But add ice, a flood of people all trying to get home (there's that fear thing again!) a complete, or nearly so, lack of experience with the stuff and then total screw ups by those people who should have known better and you have a mess.
And yes,I am still putting some of the blame on the population. Even if the powers-that-be were stupid enough to "Fail to take appropriate action" the vast majority of the population HAD to have known it was coming so, yes, they have some of the blame.
Bottom line? People who live up north should not try to downgrade the seriousness of the situation for people not exposed constantly to it.
I agree with some commenters that a good chunk of the mess was poor planning - by everyone in Atlanta - but to Atlantans, this WAS a major storm. And even at that it wasn't as bad as had been predicted. YOU may not believe so, but where do you live?
It just depends on what you are familiar with.
I grew up in MN and the schools did not always close when they probably should have. There were times that I kept my kids home because I was not going to put their lives at risk. Most every place I worked would allow the people that lived the farthest away to leave the earliest, and the ones the lived close by (or really didn't have to get home) would leave the latest or offer to stay all night, just in case the next day people could not get in. When you work at hospitals or nursing homes, if the weather is that bad, you can't leave period. Therefore, you are forced to think ahead about things like.......should the kids go to school or daycare today? Or should I maybe have them go to friends or family, or have someone come to my home?
ReplyDeleteIf I'm on a oxygen......maybe I shouldn't really be out and about today. For phucks sake, I could go on and on for hours about how stupid the people were down there.
I'm a diehard liberal and expect my elected officials to do what they can to help people. But, I do not require them to do my thinking for me.
We keep a "winter box" in the car. It has a down sleeping bag, 2 blankets, space blankets, chemical hand warmers, down sweater, (2 pair each) boots, gloves, socks, hats, headlamps, water (which would be frozen, of course, but could thaw out if needed), snacks and toilet paper and a basic first aid kit. Granted there is no reason for Georgia people to have a "winter box" but maybe some of them will consider it after this debacle. I've never needed it, but it's nice to know it's there!
DeleteIn January 1977 I was working for GM in western New York State. Friday morning, January 28, 1977 the State Police informed our plant of the approaching blizzard and pleaded with the management to close immediately and send workers home.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/bzpns.htm
That would have cost money so the factory ran as normal. Nobody was allowed to leave the plant during their shift. The storm hit with full force around 1:00 p.m. As a result of this shortsightedness hundreds of people were stranded at the plant.
After that people realized how much their lives meant to corporate and they had no qualms calling in when the weather was bad. The money GM lost over the years for late start ups and overtime pay I'm certain outweighed what the cost would have been to just shut down and send people home that fateful Friday.
The shortsighted focus on money never changes. I've lived in Alabama for the past 16 years. There is no infrastructure here to handle snow and ice. It is safer and easier to just close everything down to keep people off the roads. In the long run it is probably cheaper too.
I live north of Atlanta. The snow was heavier for us, but the traffic wasn't as bad. I had to work the evening shift at the hospital. I don't have cable tv so even though there was beginning to be a little snow when I left home, it wasn't until I got to the hospital that I realized how bad it would be.
ReplyDeleteI had my son bring over a overnight bag in case we couldn't get out. The hospital sets up cots for nursing and hospital staff in those cases. The next shift can't get in and you can't get out. The police can sometimes bring in some staff, but they are usually taking care of traffic accidents and people trapped in areas where they need help.
We then have to work double, sometimes triple shifts. We rotate with sleeping. Even when the main roads are ok to drive on. Subdivisions here are usually hilly with lots of shade trees blocking the roads from the sun. Those roads can be impossible to get out of for days. Since Georgia rarely gets snow, the state won't invest much in resources to deal with these situations.
OT but I'm excited about this. Georgia legislature has assigned a bill for medical marijuana for seizure disorders! It is actually to amend an existing law that allows it to be prescribed by medical research facilities for cancer patients and glaucoma suffers, though a state board has never been authorized to administer the program. I think this will change this. It needs to be studied. It needs to be regulated at this time. My hope is that down the road, when it is shown to be a safer, more effective option for those diagnosis and disorders, it will change the consensus that this is a dangerous drug that people want to use just to get high.
Rep Allen Peake, R - Macon, introduced the bill. It is called, Haleigh's Hope Act, HB 885. He ACTUALLY SAID, "We have to take the politics out of this issue, and look to the science."
A Republican looking at the science, in GEORGIA! Who would have thought?!
You say that your lack of cable TV waswhy you did not realize how bad the weather would be... But you obviously have a computer and Internet connection. So why did you not check www.weather.gov for the actual NWS forecast?
Delete8:17, it's called a mind set. When people are completely unused to things like what happened they simply do NOT think about the importance of such things.
DeleteShould she/he have? Yes. But I can understand why she/he didn't.
@ 8:17,
DeleteWe usually don't have a problem with snow here in Georgia. We might have a few light flurries, but they rarely stick. Since I normally keep the blinds closed, I didn't even notice it was snowing until I was leaving for work. At that time, it was just lightly snowing. I work the 3 -11 shift.
I only live 7 miles from work. Once I got there, that is when I found out how bad the weather was going to get later on. I had my son bring my overnight bag. No big deal. I was ready in case I got stuck there.
Deb, I have the utmost respect for all nurses. In our area, when we get hit bad with storms, we have volunteers with four wheel drives to help nurses get to and from the hospital, because their hours usually start long before the plows can do at least one pass on the main roads.
DeleteAccording to Sarah Palin's facebook post, she wouldn't mind getting stuck in that traffic jam because she would get a free Chick-fil-A meal. Did the homophobic Chick-fil-A folks just give out meals to heterosexual couples? What if two guys were in the car, just two buddies sharing a ride home from work? Leave it to Sarah to make a joke out of a serious situation where peoples' lives and health were at stake.
ReplyDeleteWell, it looks like a little bit of all of your points of view are accurate. Fortunately for my family, both kids schools are less than ten minutes away so we were able to avoid the maylay. My heart still hurts for those who were not so fortunate.
ReplyDeleteFor those who don't know, Atlanta is a hilly place. No road stays flat or straight for long. I'm normally embarrassed in the presence of a seasoned winter-weather Northerner when we freak out over snow flurries. However, after talking to my friends from snow-bound cities, the horror they said they experienced after yesterday's ordeal took away their argument that the South overreacts to "a little bit of snow." You just got to be here to understand the collective panic that occurs during heavy rains and snow.
For the first time in my 42 years of living, I've never experienced snow that turned to ice, then a second and third cover of snow, and then a fourth cover of snow. For the first time, the snow in my front yard was soft and powdery. It actually STAYED powdery (too soft for a snowman) and didn't immediately turn to ice. Snow in Atlanta has NEVER been pleasant, just hard, painful and slippery so that in itself was an extremely bizarre experience.
Bottom line: If you are not prepared for an event you've never experienced, then you're just not prepared. Atlanta (regardless of the blame this is placed on) was just not prepared. Though warned (government officials, schools, hospitals, individuals, etc.), I'm sure everyone was thinking it would be light flurries that melted on your windshield like it always does when they say snow. Well, now we know it was the real deal.
So there's plenty of blame to go around! Luckily, no deaths have been reported....yet. And like Brick 6:54am said, it's safer, cheaper and easier to just close everything down and keep people off the roads.
P.S.,.....it's malaise..........
DeleteThe hills also are the problem in Seattle when it snows. People get in their cars and drive anyway and the result is cars, buses and trucks sideways on the bottom of the hills.
DeleteJesse, when people go on about how the low temps “prove” there is no climate change it is best to ask if they understand the difference between climate and weather and point them to a library for information.
Emily Post
Anonymous 8:20 AM says -
DeleteP.S.,.....it's malaise......…
I usually have a problem with people correcting comments. I'm going to make an exception here.
I believe the word Super Fan was going for may have been melee - pronounced maylay. But one way or another, we all knew what was meant.
8:46 -
DeleteWhen I was just a young college student, I visited my sister in Seabeck at Christmas. They rarely had any measurable snow, but that week they had a storm that dumped 14 inches in a few hours. There were no plows and most people had no clue how to drive in that kind of snow so there were accidents everywhere.
We had to go rescue a neighbor who got stuck at the Navy base, and I ended up driving her car home. On the way, we had to climb a hill that was so steep that I slid backwards, halfway down the hill, four times. There was a turn at the bottom that prevented me from getting a running start and, if I slid too far backwards, I'd end up dropping onto the highway. My sister finally trudged down from her truck at the top and managed to get us up the hill by gunning the engine and sliding around the turn. I was never so glad to see her house as I was that afternoon!
I am unable to log in, I can't remember my Google Password!!
ReplyDeleteI am from New England, and moved to Nashville around 18 years or so ago.
When I was getting ready to move here, my Spouse would tell me that if there was a dusting of snow, that everything shut down. I thought he was just kidding around.
But after I moved here, to Nashville, I was driving back from KY early in the morning and a few flurries were coming down. The ground was not frozen, so they melted as soon as they hit the pavement.
This is real, I'm NOT joking. People started slamming on their brakes!! They were panicking!! God forbid there ever is a REAL Snowstorm, they would not know how to drive in it!!
With only a prediction of snow, Schools shut down for a week!! Grocery Stores were all bought out, It was hard to find firewood to buy! And if/when you found some, the prices were sky high!
Trust me, because I did not trust Spouse, people in the South are already the WORST Drivers I've ever seen. But if it flurries outside?? They panic so badly, you'd think it was the Great Blizzard.
Oh yeah, they DO shut down the City!! Government and everything else shuts down.
It is a massive joke~ but very real.
MaryB
Wisconsin here... coldest winter I can remember in 50 years. This is not normal... the winds too - I've never seen such sustained high winds here. There have been times this winter where they will blow 25 - 50 for 60 to 70 hours straight. SOMETHING has changed.
ReplyDeleteWhere are Sarah and Franklin with bibles and cookies?
ReplyDeleteBeing from a northern area, having 4 inches of snow would be no problem either, BUT, these states that don't usually get this snow don't have the winter tired, the municipal plows, sanders, salters, like we are equipped with. Northerners know to put candy and water in the car, just in case.
ReplyDeleteI feel for all those people who were stuck and waiting. Hopefully, Atlanta City will prepare for another repeat of this. When I heard about this, my heart went out to them. What really troubled me though, was that B!tch from Wasilla posting on her facebook about how she'd love the free Chik-Fil-A food. Her, of all people, sitting back in her comfortable office, with the luxury of not being stuck with infants and special needs children in a car for 12 hours, with 911 respondents being over-extended, loves to rub it in their faces. And the "free" food point she made, was all about digging at the President.
Only a heartless bitch could write out a message like that.
This is why it's important to use the term 'climate change' instead of 'global warming'.
ReplyDeleteYes, the planet IS warming overall, but the changes in the climate can also produce much worse snowstorms (and rainstorms) because of the added moisture that the warmer air can absorb.
We've seen an enormous increase in extreme weather of all kinds over the past couple of decades, so something is definitely changing, and doing so more rapidly.
I was raised on Long Island and moved to western NY about 15 years ago. I can even see a big difference in how they react to snow in the NY metro area and how we deal with it up here.
ReplyDeleteTwo inches of snow at just the wrong time can effectively shut down most of the Island and NYC, but we don't even consider it a 'storm' here until it's almost a foot of snow.
Even with only a small amount of snow, if you don't have salt and sand for the roads (like in the south), they can become treacherous.
Regional climate change isn't quite working out as people would have assumed. Colder winters in the lower 48 and warmer wet winters in AK are now the new norm. Droughts in portions of the west are being exacerbated by jet stream changes and the balance of high and low pressure systems being affected.
ReplyDeleteI feel for those people in the south during winter weather events. Even if you are acting sanely going from point A to point B there are 10 frantic out of control drivers for every sane one and just a little bit of ice our snow can send these people into a panic, which affects everyone else. Hell, even here in AK people forget how to drive in the snow and we have problems each fall when the snow flies. It will happen again after having snow free roads now for 3 weeks; next storm people will forget and the Glenn Highway median will be full of cars. Usually people don't have to spend the night in their cars though....that's just crazy!
I remember one freak storm that hit Indiana while we were visiting. They didn't have mandatory inspection of cars, so you'd see bumpers being held to the car with bungee chords, bald tires were "in vogue" and duct tape body work was fairly common. It was a quick storm leaving about a half inch of powdery snow, and the people hit the gas hard and the brakes harder. Getting from point A to point B was like driving through a demolition derby. We gave up and pulled into a motel.
ReplyDeleteThis storm in Georgia brought out the best in people. One lady went into labor and delivered her baby on a sled en route to an awaiting ambulance. I honestly think social media played a huge role in saving lives. The only thing I hope is that they learned something and will have a contingency plan in place the next time it happens.