http://www.ajc.com/news/news/winter-storm-warning-expanded-to-include-all-of-me/nc4ym/ The most telling statement on the clusterf*ck in Atlanta yesterday is this
Todd Duncan is an idiot and should move back to New Jersey. It snowed and was a nightmare, but life goes on. I am sorry Todd's pussy hurts.
I'd say more clueless than stupidity. There's not a lot of snow experience in Atlanta. We're having a good time here in Chicago. It hit 33 degrees one day last week, otherwise it has not crossed the freezing point during the past 8 days, and is not forecasted to do so at any time over the next 10 days. Not so much opportunity to get rid of the 27 inches of snow we've had this month.
Video was more low key, than whiney, unlike your post! http://www.ajc.com/ Looks like there's a lot of articles, detailing Day One & a second day of problems.
We get one of these storms every year or so - usually late winter or early spring. I guess the city doesn't want to pay for all the equipment it would take to quickly de-ice the roads based on one storm every year or two. Also, when it snows the people have a tendency to freak out and start driving like they just downed a bottle of quaaludes, so that doesn't help.
Like Seattle. Just wait for it to melt. It makes sense when snowfalls are so rare and usually melt so quickly. Driving in snow is tricky. Even Chicagoans screw up a lot. I have one car with all-wheel drive and one without. The former isn't bad, just accelerate and decelerate slowly and be careful on turns, and you will be fine. But the car without is a nasty bitch ... you can be seemingly the same thing as always, and then the back of the car is fishtailing, and then the car slides halfway into the other lane or toward a fence, and they isn't ********all that you can do about it.
My younger brother, when he was in college at U of I U/C, wound up giving his chemistry TA winter driving lessons after the guy had multiple fender-benders on this first drive to work after the first snow. For some reason, he wanted to drive FASTER in the snow and to hit the breaks harder. My older brother lived in Fort Worth Texas and they got four inches of snow. Having just moved there from Chicago, he drove in with little trouble (almost no cars on the road). The closest thing to trouble came when he was stopped at a red light and a cab-driver (most of the cabs down there are station wagons) approaching behind him applied the brakes. My brother swears he saw the guy's right knee come up to ear level before trying to stop. The guy did a 540 spin and stopped about 5 feet from my brother. And... full credit to the cabbie: he was still his lane. And my brother was the only guy who came into work except a woman who'd just moved there from Michigan.
Don't most cars have ABS breaking now? You would think this would help the uneducated southern drivers deal with snow. Unless, of course, they think they can still go 90 on I-75.
I was in San Angelo, Texas some years back and we had a couple of heavy back to back snowfalls. The city couldn't do much except spread sand and after two weeks there was so much sand on the road when the snow melted that the sand was more treacherous than the snow had ever been.
As insufferable as I am most of the time, it gets worse in winter. I just can't take the whining. Grow a pair, shovel your driveway, and get your ass to work/school. Also, don't people understand the concept of downshifting? I mean, I drive a FWD Passat, automatic transmission. It's pretty damned easy to slow down by shifting into 3 or 2. People who can't handle winter are idiots, lazy or just pain weak. Take your pick. Finally, I'm reasonably sure that Weather Underground just makes shit up. I mean, you see them post a National Weather Service storm warning or something, and it reads pretty much like you'd expect a NWS announcement to read; fairly dispassionate. But they also post these other 'wind chill warnings' and whatnot, that are just pure sensationalism. There was one here last night, and we have no effing wind at all. Assholes. I might need to move farther north again if this keeps up.
When I lived in Southern Minnesota*, they used sand because it was usually too cold for salt to do much good. After a couple of weeks, the sand would polish the packed snow at intersections down to hockey rink-quality ice. You'd have to be a damn fool to cross at a crosswalk if you were a pedestrian, because cars couldn't count on stopping in time. You also had to be a damn fool to drive more than 10 MPH on all but the two or three busier streets. *mid to late 80s here.
this storm should not have been a surprise to anyone not living under a rock. nor should the fact that Atlanta doesn't have the infrastructure to deal with a storm like this been a surprise to anyone not living under a rock. so if you decided to drive to work or drive your kids to school that day, you are to total ********ing idiot.
The trick I learned in college is, pick one of the roads that you are seeing and just stay on that one. I'm gonna go with "all of the above."
The first winter after we moved to Charleston SC it snowed about 2" one night - my mom got up and drove to work. She said it seemed a bit odd that no other cars were on the road and even weirder that she sat in the lot at Levi's for an hour waiting on someone to show up to open the place before she ended up driving back home. The whole area shut down for 2 days, it was fun. We moved from there (many years later) to Erie, Pa - what a shock that I had to get to school when there was 4 feet of snow on the ground Erie, now that place was awesome at snow removal. But nothing else. Y'all make it sound easy to drive on icy roads that have never been treated (it is not)
Tagged along with my wife to a conference in Erie for three or four days a few years ago. Not too bad. A Starbucks did a fairly decent impression of a real coffee shop, and the NBA D-League team provided a couple of decent games for us. Probably go back there next summer if we have time to do our "catch a baseball game in every park in the state" vacation. Of course, the town I live in now is basically Erie without the lake, so I have low standards
Is the average resident's age still over 70? I haven't been there since the 80s so it might have developed a little class and something to do in that time - I did see some great concerts there (albeit in a hockey "Field House") - and Presque Isle is fairly nice, as was the pier at the end of State Street where we used to "cruise", and the fancy port that used to be a landfill. It wasn't the most exciting place to be a teenager
I think the former landfill is where our hotel was. And re: the age... now that you mention it, the crowd at the basketball games actually looked noticeably older than the crowds we'd see at the Pittsburgh Symphony.
You've not really seen shitty winter drivers until you've seen immigrant West Indians try to drive in snow. 5 mph, if you're lucky, and they still drive through intersections with no regard whatsoever for pedestrians or cyclists.
I would mention the Asian parents of Northwestern students, but that will get me into politically incorrect waters. Let me just say they drive in sunshine as if they are already in snow, so in snow itself ... oh boy.