Record Colds in many places

[allniter89]

How one inch of snow can cripple an entire region, or at least areas that only saw snow. That is one of the worst ice storms I've seen in my life for the Gulf/Carolina coastlines and a first time in seeing Winter Storm Warnings for FLORIDA!

I live 40 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico. It has been sleeting here since 4pm. The ground is white, covered with sleet. My front storm door is frozen shut. We had a couple hours of heavy sleet. I live in a mobile home and it was so noisy with the sleet hitting the outside walls and roof that I had to turn up the volume of the tv. crazy!!
It is even sleeting at the beaches. I've lived here 33 yrs, never saw anything like this.
Now the wind is picking up so I expect to be w/out electricity soon. I have the lanterns, flashlights and firewood nearby. I have hurricane supplies with sterno, food & a manuel can-opener at the ready. Bring it Mother............Nature! :-)

[Thing 342]

When I woke up this morning, my thermometer read 1 degree (Fahrenheit) below zero.     

[Brandon]

Georgia, Alabama, Florida and the Carolina's are completely screwed tonight. It is Snowmageddon down in Birmingham and Atlanta. People are stranded in their cars!

They're only stranded by the morons in front who refuse to move in the snow.  Snowmageddon my ass.  This is an inch or two, not a foot or two.  The Groundhog Day Blizzard it's not (21 inches of snow).  Now that was a major snow event.

[ET21]

Georgia, Alabama, Florida and the Carolina's are completely screwed tonight. It is Snowmageddon down in Birmingham and Atlanta. People are stranded in their cars!

They're only stranded by the morons in front who refuse to move in the snow.  Snowmageddon my ass.  This is an inch or two, not a foot or two.  The Groundhog Day Blizzard it's not (21 inches of snow).  Now that was a major snow event.

While I do agree that two inches is nothing, let me also point out they also got between a tenth and a half inch of ice on top of that. I don't care where you are, but when you put that amount of ice and snow into an area like the Gulf Coast and Southeast that doesn't see this often, you get the gridlock and shutdowns.

[english si]

Yes - a foot of snow in the Midwest and the ploughs are all out and normal order relatively quickly restored, as they are pros at this.

An inch of snow forecast in Deep South and the, hmm, what-ja-ma-call-its, well they need finding, or borrowing from elsewhere as we don't get much call for those things - something to do with breakfast - and then when we find them, we then have to remember what we need to do and then do that. And as it is cold, but not cold enough to be below freezing all the time, the snow melts and refreezes, making a slippery surface. So we just stay home, unless we're driving a gritter (that's what those doohickeys are called!) and getting rid of the white stuff we see in Christmas films...

[realjd]

Georgia, Alabama, Florida and the Carolina's are completely screwed tonight. It is Snowmageddon down in Birmingham and Atlanta. People are stranded in their cars!

They're only stranded by the morons in front who refuse to move in the snow.  Snowmageddon my ass.  This is an inch or two, not a foot or two.  The Groundhog Day Blizzard it's not (21 inches of snow).  Now that was a major snow event.

Yeah but the inch or two of snow was on top of at least a half inch of ice.

At least here in FL, I-10 is still closed in multiple places. FDOT only has a handful of sand trucks and has zero access to salt. We're just not equipped to handle winter weather down here.

One of the counties up in the panhandle went store to store buying retail salt to spread by hand because they couldn't even find a vendor for road salt.

[agentsteel53]

if you're gonna slide, slide off the road.  make room for those who can drive.

[vdeane]

And as it is cold, but not cold enough to be below freezing all the time, the snow melts and refreezes, making a slippery surface.

That's what salt is for.  The amount of snow they got, they wouldn't have even needed plows if they would have salted the road.

I was reading a facebook comment from a southerner who said they had no warning because the national weather service called for a "light dusting".  News flash, southerners: a light dusting does not mean the snow sublimates before it hits the ground.  It means exactly what you got.  And yes, the freezing point of water DOES affect the weather.

[Brandon]

And as it is cold, but not cold enough to be below freezing all the time, the snow melts and refreezes, making a slippery surface.

That's what salt is for.  The amount of snow they got, they wouldn't have even needed plows if they would have salted the road.

And if you lack salt, sand works well.  Apparently Florida has a bunch of it (/sarc).  Enough friction from the sand at those temperatures will remove most, if not all of the ice in short order.  A specialized salt truck isn't even required.  Just tip a dump truck at a shallow angle and let the sand out slowly.

[roadman65]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/atlanta-snow-storm-102839.html#.Uuq0qvtc_2Q Atlanta is having a hard time among many.  One person blamed the trouble on lack of mass transit, nonetheless preventable or unpreventable the city is in trouble.

[Brandon]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/atlanta-snow-storm-102839.html#.Uuq0qvtc_2Q Atlanta is having a hard time among many.  One person blamed the trouble on lack of mass transit, nonetheless preventable or unpreventable the city is in trouble.

Even mass transit can be affected by weather.  We had a lot of switching problems due to the excessively (-20F) cold weather on the rails.  The switches would freeze solid and had to be manually thawed.  Usually they're remotely thawed.  Granted, Atlanta had more "normal" winter temperatures (normal for Chicago) that rail switches usually work well in.

From what I've read, they did not prepare as they believed (wrongly) that the storm would go south and east of the city.

[jeffandnicole]

I've read a lot about staggering dismissals.  Sounds good in theory...does nothing in situations like this.  The conditions were drivable; but once a few accidents occurred, the roads were blocked.  If people were dismissed in stages, we would think they would listen to radio stations reporting the accidents, and go elsewhere.  Problem is - there were accidents all over the place. People leaving late would have wound up in the same traffic jams.

Another thing to remember: Traffic Lights.  Many lights are timed for rush hours and regular traffic.   When a lot of people are dismissed at noontime, even if the roads were dry, there would be traffic jams.

People drive slower in snow.  That's a duh.  But it also means you can't get as much traffic through a certain point in the same amount of time.  Have a bunch of cars try to get thru an intersection going 5 mph - there wouldn't be as many people going thru the intersection as normal, regardless of the other conditions.

There's a lot to look at besides the fact that everyone got out at the same time.  If everyone got out at 5pm on a sunny Tuesday in July, traffic would be quite heavy, but moving.  Well, unless there's a 10 car pileup blocking the entire highway.

[realjd]

You guys win. You northerners are clearly better than us inbred southern hicks in every possible way.

Seriously though, even if we had adequate resources, that doesn't mean we're able to execute as well. Lack of experience is a big factor. Who do you think is going to perform better during a snow storm: a highway agency that salts/sands the roads only once every two or three years or a highway agency that salts/sands the roads multiple times a month during the winter? All other things being equal, my money is on the crews that do it regularly.

[1995hoo]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/atlanta-snow-storm-102839.html#.Uuq0qvtc_2Q Atlanta is having a hard time among many.  One person blamed the trouble on lack of mass transit, nonetheless preventable or unpreventable the city is in trouble.

Even mass transit can be affected by weather.  We had a lot of switching problems due to the excessively (-20F) cold weather on the rails.  The switches would freeze solid and had to be manually thawed.  Usually they're remotely thawed.  Granted, Atlanta had more "normal" winter temperatures (normal for Chicago) that rail switches usually work well in.

From what I've read, they did not prepare as they believed (wrongly) that the storm would go south and east of the city.

Here in the DC area, the Metrorail system shuts down all portions not located in tunnels if we get more than eight inches of snow. But even without snow, problems happen–last week, a rail cracked on a ground-level segment, allegedly due to the single-digit temperatures.

I do find some of the misinformation that's out there amusing, though. Last week I heard a radio reporter say the very cold wind chill was causing washer fluid to freeze when it hit the window. That's not wind chill. Wind chill is a measure of the perceived decrease in air temperature when moving air contacts bare skin. It has nothing to do with fluid freezing on the windshield unless the temperature is extremely cold, much colder than it was here last week, because with respect to inanimate objects the only function of wind chill is to cause them to reach the ambient temperature in a shorter time than might otherwise be the case. In the case of the washer fluid, there simply isn't enough time for it to freeze before your wipers wipe it away unless the temperature is a good deal colder than it was here last week. (I've had washer fluid freeze on my windshield when the ambient temperature was around —30°C, but it may have been partially my fault because I may have been using fluid not rated for temperatures that cold.)

[wxfree]

I have sympathy for the people going through this.  Last month we had a winter storm in the DFW area, with sleet melting and refreezing into 3 to 4 inches of ice.  Due to prolonged cold, it took about 5 days to clear, with road graders being used to scrape ice off the freeways.  Highways were clogged for days.  Gas stations started running out of gas and stores and restaurants started running out of food.  I'm sure we would have done better with a thousand salt trucks and five million pounds of salt, and frequent experience preventing and treating ice formation.  Atlanta could have done better, too.

You don't buy a house so big that every person who ever comes to visit has his own room.  You buy a house you can afford that meets your regular needs, and make do when the needs are bigger.  We can buy a few more trucks, and use computer simulations to figure out the best ways to use them, but unless we have another ice age, it just isn't feasible to build the capacity to respond to ice as well as northerners, who, themselves, aren't exactly immune to ice and snow problems.

[formulanone]

You don't buy a house so big that every person who ever comes to visit has his own room.  You buy a house you can afford that meets your regular needs, and make do when the needs are bigger.

Usually a bigger home is located on a bigger piece of property, and thus, potentially more taxes paid to pay this kind of stuff. Just saying...Then again, if there were snow plows and tons of salt laying idle for five years, someone (or some oversight committee) would be outraged at their lack of use and wasted expenditure.

In this age of weather prediction, it's generally less excusable to not declare a "watch" in advance of a snow storm, and to take it seriously, for some area of the nation that isn't prepared for snow and ice. The South has no problem doing so for tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods...

[wxfree]

In this age of weather prediction, it's generally less excusable to not declare a "watch" in advance of a snow storm, and to take it seriously, for some area of the nation that isn't prepared for snow and ice. The South has no problem doing so for tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods...

I think this is the real point.  I remember years back it wasn't a big deal to stay home when the rare ice storm happened.  These days everyone seems to think their job is the most important in the world and they must be there regardless of weather.  Atlanta should have stayed home, which would make it easier to plow and spread salt.  Staying home for five days is questionable, but maybe if we'd stayed home one or two days during our storm, crews could have treated the roads more effectively and gotten things cleared up faster.  We knew it was going to happen and should have had a lot fewer people with non-essential jobs out on their daily commutes.

You can't spend half the winter at home, so places where this happens all the time need to be able to clear it out.  Places where it happens once every few years, or less, can just take the day off.

[vdeane]

It's worth noting that winter snow storms in the south are the new normal.  I don't know why they keep acting like it's unusual, given that there's been one every year now for a while.

I've read a lot about staggering dismissals.  Sounds good in theory...does nothing in situations like this.  The conditions were drivable; but once a few accidents occurred, the roads were blocked.  If people were dismissed in stages, we would think they would listen to radio stations reporting the accidents, and go elsewhere.  Problem is - there were accidents all over the place. People leaving late would have wound up in the same traffic jams.

Another thing to remember: Traffic Lights.  Many lights are timed for rush hours and regular traffic.   When a lot of people are dismissed at noontime, even if the roads were dry, there would be traffic jams.

People drive slower in snow.  That's a duh.  But it also means you can't get as much traffic through a certain point in the same amount of time.  Have a bunch of cars try to get thru an intersection going 5 mph - there wouldn't be as many people going thru the intersection as normal, regardless of the other conditions.

There's a lot to look at besides the fact that everyone got out at the same time.  If everyone got out at 5pm on a sunny Tuesday in July, traffic would be quite heavy, but moving.  Well, unless there's a 10 car pileup blocking the entire highway.

I've been wondering about this.  Does Atlanta not have school buses?  Where I'm from, the kids would be bussed home.  Their parents would NOT be going to school to pick them up.

[realjd]

It's worth noting that winter snow storms in the south are the new normal.  I don't know why they keep acting like it's unusual, given that there's been one every year now for a while.

The south as a whole gets a winter storm or two each year but not any given city. ATL's last bad storm was 2011 IIRC. One year it will be Dallas, then Birmingham, then Charleston, then DC. It's not frequent enough for any one place for them to get good at handling it.

[tdindy88]

I've been wondering about this.  Does Atlanta not have school buses?  Where I'm from, the kids would be bussed home.  Their parents would NOT be going to school to pick them up.

I thought it was said that they DID have school buses, but they weren't able to drop the kids off at their houses because they were getting stuck in the same traffic, so at a certain point they gave up and went back to the schools. I remember being stuck on a bus until 7:30 one night because a tornado had struck my area (both my school and individual neighborhood was fine) and we had to navigate the destruction.

[english si]

And as it is cold, but not cold enough to be below freezing all the time, the snow melts and refreezes, making a slippery surface.

That's what salt is for.  The amount of snow they got, they wouldn't have even needed plows if they would have salted the road.

They wouldn't have needed snow ploughs regardless. But even if they had used real salt (rather than sand), the thaw-freeze cycle that occurred would have made a mess still - I've seen it in Southern England sometimes. Certainly black ice is a big risk even after salting. The Atlanta photo where the interstate was a sheet of ice shows that the issue was more the ice left behind by melting snow than the amount of snowfall.

[realjd]

snow ploughs

Is that a common British spelling? I've never seen that one before. I've seen both spellings for the farm implements but modern vehicles are always "plow".

[leroys73]

Glad for Global warming or it would be worse.

[NE2]

Glad for Global warming or it would be worse.

And this thread was going so well...

[Molandfreak]