Unexpected Overnight Christmas Roadtrip

[JMoses24]

On Friday, I was supposed to fly from OKC to Atlanta, Georgia via Southwest Airlines, with a layover in Houston. However, after everybody boarded the aircraft, the airline cancelled the flight entirely (still unsure why). This would have left me stranded, but my roommate decided he wasn't going to let my holiday trip get derailed entirely. So, after heading back to the apartment, we loaded the 2019 Jeep Cherokee and rolled out shortly after 5pm CT with the goal of getting me to Loganville, Georgia.

Route: I-240 (OK) east, onto I-40 east to I-55 south to I-240 (TN) east to US 78 east, then continuing I-22 east (thus getting me a full route clinch of I-22) to I-65 south to I-20 east into Georgia. From there, exit 75 to local roads into Loganville, arriving at 8am Eastern on Christmas Eve morning. Everything from Memphis east was new to me. 

Notes: For being a Friday night before a major holiday, we did not have too many traffic troubles. Roadwork on I-40 and I-55 in Arkansas and Tennessee made up the extent of the disruptive work, and in particular I-40 both west of Little Rock and before the I-55 merge in Arkansas. I-22 is well built. I did notice that ALDOT still uses the Corridor X signage for US 78 in the state. Also, at one point near Tupelo after a gas stop, we accidentally entered westbound I-22 instead of east (it was 3am CT at this point and we were making this trip on little sleep). So, we had to backtrack for four miles and then return east.

Gas prices were generally in the $2.50 to $2.80 range where we stopped.

New counties visited on this drive were:

MS (NEW STATE): Benton, DeSoto, Itawamba, Lee, Marshall, Pontotoc, and Union
AL: Calhoun, Cleburne, Jefferson, Marion, St Clair and Walker
GA: Carroll, DeKalb, Douglas, Gwinnett and Haralson

[epzik8]

What a blessing in disguise.

[JMoses24]

What a blessing in disguise.

Sure, in that it got me a few more counties and some new interstate mileage. But if my roommate hadn't volunteered to do it? I'd have been screwed.

[hbelkins]

No weather issues? Consider yourself lucky. Western Kentucky, which isn't that far from Memphis, got hit with snow and sub-zero temperatures that rendered salt and calcium inefficient as melting agents.

[Rothman]

No weather issues? Consider yourself lucky. Western Kentucky, which isn't that far from Memphis, got hit with snow and sub-zero temperatures that rendered salt and calcium inefficient as melting agents.

Calcium chloride works up to -25°F.

[JMoses24]

No weather issues? Consider yourself lucky. Western Kentucky, which isn't that far from Memphis, got hit with snow and sub-zero temperatures that rendered salt and calcium inefficient as melting agents.

Nope, we dodged it to the south.

[hbelkins]

No weather issues? Consider yourself lucky. Western Kentucky, which isn't that far from Memphis, got hit with snow and sub-zero temperatures that rendered salt and calcium inefficient as melting agents.

Calcium chloride works up to -25°F.

You must have different calcium than we do.

[Rothman]

No weather issues? Consider yourself lucky. Western Kentucky, which isn't that far from Memphis, got hit with snow and sub-zero temperatures that rendered salt and calcium inefficient as melting agents.

Calcium chloride works up to -25°F.

You must have different calcium than we do.

Nope.  Calcium chloride is calcium chloride.

[Dirt Roads]

No weather issues? Consider yourself lucky. Western Kentucky, which isn't that far from Memphis, got hit with snow and sub-zero temperatures that rendered salt and calcium inefficient as melting agents.

Calcium chloride works up to -25°F.

Yes, if you live in a state where "clearing the snow" means smoothing it down to get some traction.  In almost all of Kentucky (and much of The South), folks don't know how to drive in snow and ice.  So the measurement of whether road salt/calcium chloride/brine actually works is when the road is completely devoid of anything white or icy.  My father worked 50 miles away in Kentucky for 20 years, and only missed one day of work due to snow.  But his office in Ashland was still officially "closed" for much of the winters back in 1977-78-79 because the folks living within a mile of the office weren't able to get to work.  If the DOH could get the snow down to about 1/2-inch and get enough salt down to keep the surface from icing, we could drive pretty close to 55MPH (which was still slow compared to the days before the NMSL).

By the way, the goal is to keep the "effective surface" from ever balancing out at freezing (32^oF = 0^oC) for a period of time long enough to ice over.  On rubber-tired trains, they keep the guideway heating turned on between 34^oF and 27^oF, then turn it off below that point.  Below something around 28^oF, the snow accumulation is too cold to create "black ice", which is where you completely lose friction.  It's a little harder to achieve this goal with deicing compounds, but in general the rule works the same.  You will get reasonable surface friction (even when sliding) on snow or ice when the surface is not at 32^oF.  I've worked on several driverless systems where the system designers needed to prove that they could maintain safe braking distances in all forms of adverse weather.