I will not SNOW PLOW WITH YOU, ATLANTA!

[Phentex]

Please read and understand.

Yesterday's nightmare in Atlanta was NOT because of an inability to drive in snow. OR a lack of snow plows. Or tire chains.

1. The forecast was iffy. Here's one excerpt from a a typical article BEFORE Tuesday:

If you live in metro Atlanta, there’s a chance you’ll see snow Tuesday, according to forecasters. And if you live south of town, there’s an even better chance for snow, along with freezing rain and sleet.

While the winter storm watch is no longer in effect for metro Atlanta, the National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for part of north Georgia that includes the metro area from 10 a.m. Tuesday to 7 a.m. Wednesday. The winter storm warning remains in effect from 10 a.m. Tuesday to 1 p.m. Wednesday for much of central Georgia.

Full link: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/winter-storm-watch-expanded-to-include-most-of-met/nc3yx/

2. The roads were drivable when the snow first started. But everyone left at the same time. Now, as I stated elsewhere, rush hour is one thing. That just means you will move slowly but eventually get home. GRIDLOCK is different. Nobody moves. Cars block intersections and ramps. Nobody moves.

Here is an excerpt explaining what happened AFTER Tuesday:

"At noon, it started snowing. All of the schools, at once, decided to close without any advance notice around 1:30. It was basically, 'Hey, we're closed now! come get your kids!'"

And around the same time, most businesses closed.

"So that's roughly 5 million people who all got on the roads at the same time, which clearly caused a massive traffic jam. Then, while they're out there, the snow gets worse, turns into slush, and then, eventually, full-on sheets of ice. And, while everyone was in gridlock, they couldn't reload the salt trucks because the gridlock was too thick to navigate back to the salt storage areas (we have 30 trucks & 40 plows in ATL proper)," Medwed said.

MEANING: All the snow plows from here to Winnipeg could not get through!

And there they were, all those shiny new trucks just waiting in the ready to be heroes of the day! They were gonna spread! They were gonna plow! Instead they were forced back to their hiding places like lifeboats in the desert, shamed and laughed at by the veteran trucks of the North.

3. Atlanta needed a plan to ease gridlock (or more importantly, PREVENT IT in the first place). If you want to blame the mayor and governor for this, it's a good starting place. The pandemonium IS something to laugh about. But kids stranded on a bus until the National Guard got them off this morning is nothing to laugh about.

All I am asking you to understand is gridlock. Before you mock about lack of tire chains (true), lack of experience driving in the snow (true), lack of proper road clearing equipment (true), panic at the sight of a flake (true), PLEASE understand gridlock and the lack of planning is what caused the nightmare yesterday.

Thank you.

[Brainstormy]

1. You missed one reason

I've read repeatedly today that we don't take snow "seriously." So that's probably it. A lack of seriousness. While I despise our governor and would ordinarily and gleefully jump on any reason to criticize him, I'm not even going there. The problem was a lack of seriousness.

Wish I knew how to make that dripping sarcasm thingie.

[Phentex]

3. ...

The sarcasm emoticon is under the ... set at the end of the other ones.

[LiberalFighter]

6. The governor was trying to blame the NWS for not forecasting correctly

yet he stated the local forecasters were more accurate. And he was trying to get the NWS to change their modeling. WTF! Why didn't he just go with the locals then?

Maybe it was the Atlanta mayor.

[Phentex]

8. At this point he is blaming everyone else...

but he's an idiot for many other reasons aside from snow.

[Warpy]

29. Colon sarcasm Colon

I don't think a lot of the bosses took it seriously and thought they could get at least half a day's work out of people before sending them home before the roads got bad.

I sympathize fully with Atlanta's plight. We had an 18 inch snowfall here in the high desert a few years ago and there were no plows for anything but the interstates. The city was paralyzed for about a week.

Atlanta on a bright, sunny afternoon has hellish rush hours, I've been through them. I can't imagine throwing snow into the mix.

[Phentex]

2. kick

[uppityperson]

4. Gridlock and ice? Yuck

[AngryAmish]

26. I have been in gridlock and ice

But what did I know, other than living in Chicago my entire life.

It was kinda cool at the end. I was on grand ave. In elmwood park. Got in the right lane/parking lane. Could not move. Left the car, found a bar, sweet Italian barmaid who lived above her folks in a two flat...

Oh to be 28 again...

[PasadenaTrudy]

5. And this

from Eric Holthaus on Slate:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/01/29/winter_weather_sends_south_into_chaos_who_s_to_blame.html

[Phentex]

7. That

is a very good article.

[PasadenaTrudy]

10. He's great

One of my twitter buddies

[madokie]

9. You pretty much got it

[snooper2]

11. The forecast was iffy? SOOOO?

They usually OVERREACT!

If we have an inkling of sleet or freezing rain or ice and the night before the news will have all the DOT folks on showing pictures of people ready to act. My work says call the number in the morning and will send out an email at 4:00AM

Even if it's iffy or it "may" start they just tell everyone to work from home, close schools if their is the slightest risk. (sometimes the abundance of caution is ridiculous actually)



Maybe Atlanta is an example of some incompetence on everyone who lives there......

[Phentex]

12. They can't win...

we have had closures before and when nothing happenedm people complained to high heaven. Just a couple of weeks ago, they closed some schools because the temp was supposed to be five degrees. People complained. They didn't understand that some kids would be walking to school or be standing at bus stops and might not be prepared with adequate clothing for temps that low.

People should have stayed home yesterday. But EVEN today, with temps in the teens and ice still on the road, people called into radio stations saying their bosses told them they needed to be at work today.

The place reeks of incompetence but there is no one solution.

[Ilsa]

20. It all boils down to greed.

Employers used to tell people to stay home if travel to work wasn't safe. Now they want to be open even if there are no customers. Same with school districts potentially losing state money if they can't make up the snow days.

[Phentex]

22. Yes!

And the schools used to build in snow days but I don't think they do that anymore.

[Ilsa]

31. Actually, some schools do build in a few

Bad weather days. It's fun to get a day off in the Spring when winter is over and you haven't used up all of the bad weather days.

[TBF]

13. Another view -

One of our guys in Houston (he works for the newspaper so doesn't always get the attention the TV folks do) forecast that Houston might not get hit after all on Monday afternoon and everyone ignored him. So he was already angry about that by the time he saw the Atlanta situation - but I still think he has some good points in this rant of his. He thinks the governor of Georgia dropped the ball --

The state of Georgia utterly failed Atlanta, and then sought to blame forecasters
Posted on January 29, 2014 | By Eric Berger

The city of Atlanta has been gripped within a true Snowpacalypse for the last day or so.

Students spent the night on buses or at schools, commuters abandoned their cars or idled in them all night and the highways-turned-parking lots iced over when a winter storm slammed the city, according to reports.
Traffic inches along the connector of Interstate's 75 and 85 as snow blankets Metro Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon. (AP)

Traffic on the connector of I-75 and I-85 as snow blankets Atlanta Tuesday afternoon. (AP)

The human drama here is tremendous, but for me it was insightful to watch the reaction of Georgia’s governor, Nathan Deal, attempting to deflect blame last night after the fiasco ensued.

In remarks during a late-night news conference (see video) Deal had the following to say about a severe winter event in the Atlanta metro area.

“We have been confronted with an unexpected storm that hit the metropolitan area,” he said.

He would add that on Tuesday morning, at 10 a.m., he issued an executive order to employees saying it was a “liberal leave day” as some parts of the state would see severe weather. But of Atlanta, Deal said:

“At that time it was still, in most of the forecasts, anticipated that the city of Atlanta would only have a mild dusting or a very small accumulation if any, and that the majority of the effects of the storm would be south of here. Preparations were made for those predictions.”

At 10 a.m. Deal should have been exercising his power as the state’s top official to ensure that people, from his own employees down to children in kindergarten, were heading home early. Here’s why ...

more here: http://blog.chron.com/weather/2014/01/the-state-of-georgia-utterly-failed-atlanta-and-then-sought-to-blame-forecasters/

[TxGrandpa]

28. Here in the Houston area people complained about the hype about Tuesday...

..but after seeing what happened in Atlanta, at least we should be happy that local governments and school districts erred on the side of safety.

[TBF]

30. I agree -

I am south of the city and it was dry and cool when I woke up Tuesday, knowing already that the kids were home from school for the day. The models did show that precip. might go around us (especially closer to the coast) but that wasn't until about 3:00 on Monday and there was still a 50% chance it could hit. That's still high enough to close things down in an area not accustomed to this type of weather. I think Houston did the right thing.

[BellaKos]

32. When you have the responsibility

for millions of people, you should always err on the side of caution and consider every contingency. Period.
One thing that the governor *should* have known is how quickly any sort of precipitation would turn to ice in those temperatures. "Should" is a mild word in those circumstances. It is his responsibility to know.
He and the mayor were derelict in their duties. Nobody, whether in business, the police force, in the education community, in medicine, and certainly in the military, would be able to get away with this monumental failure and negligence. An ordinary citizen would be fired and/or charged with a criminal offense if pain, suffering, and injury were their faults.

Also, I have to add that El Paso, where I live, has snow as rarely as Atlanta. And when the possibility of a snow event arises, the trucks are out at least ten hours before and continue salting even well past the event. Overpasses, bridges, access roads, mountain passes, and other secondary highways are closed. Of course, schools are closed. Emergency Command centers are set up by local government and hospitals. People are well-informed about what to expect, urged to prepare, and encouraged to stay off the roads.
And if roads are treacherous, drivers are told to stay home, except for emergencies.

Look past the mayor and governor's rhetoric. Look only at their actions. Then, you can easily see that they did nothing. And as public servants, responsible for the well-being of a huge city, they were negligent -- perhaps criminally.

[TBF]

34. I see you agree with Eric (Science Guy) -

and I do as well. Someone should have been interpreting those models better - and if they did than people in high positions of power ignored them and should be held accountable.

[hdayejr]

14. What do you expect?

Republican governor Nathan Deal.

Need we say more?

[Phentex]

15. If we do

We run the chance of having a thread hidden.

He sounds more idiotic than ever.

[alarimer]

16. It does seem like poor planning on the part of businesses and schools, though.

If they knew bad weather was coming, why didn't they close all day?

My office has been closed since Tuesday (Eastern NC) and we didn't get snow until around 5 pm. And we're closed until noon tomorrow. So I'm baffled by the decision making on the part of schools and businesses. Not at the people who ventured out. They had no choice.

[pnwmom]

19. The forecast was "iffy," as the OP says. n/t

[BellaKos]

33. The answer: failure of leadership.

If the local and state government -- mayor and governor -- had treated the situation like other cities (see my comments about El Paso above), then businesses would have followed their lead.
If a state of emergency was declared beforehand, managers and educators would have made their decisions within that context.

[freshwest]

17. Where I live, any snow or ice means the DOT stays up all night and gets positioned for action.

But schools and businesses are very reluctant to close. It makes it a necessity to keep the roads going unless it's day after day of snow and stuff. Then those who are going to work have to depend on mass transit. And at times, that does not work as well as one might think. But we are not usually taking the brunt of such things.

I don't put down the folks in Atlanta at all and don't know why anyone would. But have read a spat of threads today going back and forth on this. I grew up in a city where only one inch of snow was sufficient to shut down the schools, etc. We just did not 'believe' in snow. I don't fault Atlanta.

The scenes in Atlanta of the gridlock were no different than Houston when evacuating from a hurricane. People died as ambulances could not get through and cars were running out of gasoline and getting stuck. The Gulf Freeway starts at the beach and ends up in Dallas, roughly speaking. Millions of people trying to get away. It's okay.

Sometimes the best of planning will fail:

Within a week or so, I and most neighbors didn't bother to go out. People were scooting around on jet skis or walking over snow and ice.

Hold your head up proud, Atlanta! Elect Carter and Nunn and go blue!

[Ilsa]

18. School district administrators, the governor, mayor Reed,

All of them are hanging on to a weather forecast which said it wouldn't get bad until later in the afternoon. They didn't bother building in any kind of time buffer or variance from forecast. They decided to hang their careers on a time set by one of the weather services, without considering updated information. When has The Weather ever watched a clock?

I always try to build a time allowance into weather forecasts. The last one was during hurricane Claudette.

[BainsBane]

21. Our local public radio affiliate had a meteorologist from the university saying that

Atlanta doesn't contrast professional weather forecasters used by a number of cities and states that enable them to save millions on snow removal and other weather-related expenses. The Minnesota Department of Transportation does rely on such forecasts to help them prepare. We're not talking about what's on the news but something more specialized.

[7962]

23. Its not the snow, its the ice. Nathan Deal & Kassim Reed couldnt have done much different.

In a press conference today, Deal said if he'd had all the trucks out spreading slt, etc, and nothing happened then everyone wouldve been bitching about the waste of taxpayer money. And he's right. A LOT of schools made the decision to close all day Tuesday. The ones in Atl didnt. Many businesses closed the whole day or at 12. Many didnt. And if you spread all the sand/salt/etc before anything happens, then cars riding thru it just spreads it all to the side of the road where its useless. It doesnt help that people think driving on snow and ice is the same thing. Its NOT.
The fact that Metro Atlantans continue to vote against expanding the train system makes it even worse.
There are plenty of people to blame; the Mayor and Governor dont deserve much more than everybody else, IMO.

[Phentex]

25. Many of the people who hate the train system...

Never use the train system. It boggles the mind.

[New Orleans Strong]

24. There is no plan!

It simply doesn't happen. Sure, there has been snow in N.O., but it is so rare that we don't have a plan. The city shuts down. Period. No plows. Of COURSE! Why would 30th parallel have plows. We do try to work from home, except for people who work at hospitals and zoos and groceries and laundromats and restaurants and housekeeping and home health and hotels trying to reassure visitors that the power will come back on... Soon! When those people go to work - on bikes, by foot, because NOBODY can drive for the accidents, And you better have your bike helmet on for the ice.

This weather doesn't happen here. Or it used to not happen here. Used to... Good luck
Atlanta. I am really thinking about all of you and how hard and brutal this is. People still in their cars!? I know!!! August 29, 2005... Weather is not the same.

Be safe Atlanta, and I hope that people realize that weather is not a sane issue now. Just be safe -

[dionysus]

27. an rbtexla impersonation?