New thread about the weather Down South....

[DavidS]

cbelt3 wrote:
[quote=PeterB]
Atlanta, honestly, it sounds awful, and a complete fail on the part of the city's prep crew..

FWIW, usually such areas do not have the equipment to deal with anything like that because it's so unusual. Here's the closest parallel:

A herd of angry elephants rampages through a midwestern US town. The Sheriff is excoriated in the press for not having trained mahouts on staff.
No, the city screwed up, plain and simple. After 2011, they spent millions of dollars on more equipment. They have plenty of snow plows and sand/salt trucks. However, by the time they tried to mobilize them, the streets were already gridlocked. They should have started the night before or at 9am after morning rush hour.

Speedy wrote:
Some students in Atlanta spent the overnight in school. A couple students spent the night on their school bus.

Not "some." Not a "couple." Thousands! Big difference.

The school systems did not decide to close early until 1:45pm. They told us that buses were running. However, 2 hours later, the buses had not even made it to the schools to pick up students. Many then got stuck on the road. They should have closed and mobilized at 10am when the snow started falling.

Friends and colleagues walked 5-10 miles to get home. One got in around 2am. What a mess.

[graylocks]

my son was able to get off I75 at northside highway. bought some supplies at a CVS but no stations had gas. he optioned to go to a friend's house in Marietta instead of all the way up to Kennesaw. PT got stuck between two hills on west paces ferry rd. folks in a 4WD picked him up and got him to his destination where he's safe and sound. he thinks the car will be fine once the ice melts and he has enough gas to go about 30 miles in search of a station on the way home.

what an adventure! despite the poor choice of going out yesterday he's kept a level head in all this.

[decocritter]

The weather reports I saw seemed fairly accurate, why not go with the worst case scenario in your planning? Most counties closed schools and announced it early. Atlanta traffic is gridlock anyway, you know exactly what you are going to get in any kind of bad weather. Fulton should have closed schools just because of bad traffic related to widespread bad weather, all around atlanta. Road infra structure is not adequate for metro Atlanta on a good day. Just not enough highway structure and too much reliance on neighborhood roads.

So the excuse is the storm front moved a little north? A little north or a little south would still be devastating to Atlanta traffic. Why not heed it, as it was so widespread from Alabama on?

Why do truckers ignore all weather reports and the laws about coming thru Atlanta?

Funny that no reporters or the public saw any DOT equipment working in the 12 -24 hours before the snow started. Reports were that the city sent everything down south to the counties that have no equipment.

This "weather" may not be a frequent occurrence per season, but it occurs in and around the entire metro Atlanta area a few times a season, either ice or snow. Might as well gear up for it. Schools and government employees should have not even entered into it. Greedy employers should have known the night before to close businesses.

It is no one agency or persons "fault". Even personal responsibility/decisions plays a part. Many people could have made the decision to stay home, I know several that were at malls and running errands all morning because they don't watch the news .

I am glad everyone's children made it home safely. I am definitely going to work on my car's emergency kit. I will add bottled water, snacks and a good blanket, and a phone cord that never leaves the car.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Apologies in advance to anybody that had loved ones at risk, but I guess maybe Georgia's governor would have taken it more seriously if the Weather Channel had labeled it "Winter Storm Leon's March To The Sea".

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal Calls Winter Storm That Snarled Atlanta 'Unexpected.' Really?

The temps were in the upper 20's in Savannah over the last week. What did they think was going to happen when precipitation went through the area?

[rgG]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
Apologies in advance to anybody that had loved ones at risk, but I guess maybe Georgia's governor would have taken it more seriously if the Weather Channel had labeled it "Winter Storm Leon's March To The Sea".

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal Calls Winter Storm That Snarled Atlanta 'Unexpected.' Really?

The temps were in the upper 20's in Savannah over the last week. What did they think was going to happen when precipitation went through the area?

I'll try not to make this political, but Nathan Deal is an idiot.

[decocritter]

Nathan just got shot down by news reporters about saying the weather reports said Atlanta was going to get a "dusting of snow". LOL (Not one weather report I saw on 4 local channels, said that._ The report then showed the Sunday, Monday and Tues a.m. weather bulletins and totally shot him down.

[DavidS]

rgG wrote:
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
Apologies in advance to anybody that had loved ones at risk, but I guess maybe Georgia's governor would have taken it more seriously if the Weather Channel had labeled it "Winter Storm Leon's March To The Sea".

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal Calls Winter Storm That Snarled Atlanta 'Unexpected.' Really?

The temps were in the upper 20's in Savannah over the last week. What did they think was going to happen when precipitation went through the area?

I'll try not to make this political, but Nathan Deal is an idiot.
:agree: :agree: :agree:

And I was a fan of Kasim Reed, but he handled the press conference particularly poorly this morning. When asked about how it compared to the last of these events in 2011 and the city's preparedness, he kept saying that was a 4 day event and this is only day 1. I'm not sure what that means.

He also was saying that the main priority was kids on school buses. Well, the schools should have let out at 10am when the snow started, NOT at 1:45pm when the city was already gridlocked. He showed that they clearly did not have a clue (and still don't).

[deckeda]

DavidS wrote:
The school systems did not decide to close early until 1:45pm. ...

This was our email:

The Superintendent has authorized a two-hour early dismissal for all Cherokee County School District schools – this means elementary school dismissal will begin at 12:15 p.m., with all schools dismissing by 1:45 p.m. All afternoon/evening extra-curricular activities and Polaris Evening Program classes have been cancelled.

Apparently, elementary kids here got out before 12:15. I was at the bus stop at 12:20--two hours before they would normally be there, as per the email--and the bus showed up.

The extra 1.5hrs that lapsed to get the older kids on busses was the straw that broke the camel's back. By then, busses were getting stuck and there certainly wasn't any after-school stuff going on.

The rest of it (a lot, actually) had to be stranded parents causing stranded students.

[DavidS]

deckeda wrote:
[quote=DavidS]
The school systems did not decide to close early until 1:45pm. ...

This was our email:

The Superintendent has authorized a two-hour early dismissal for all Cherokee County School District schools – this means elementary school dismissal will begin at 12:15 p.m., with all schools dismissing by 1:45 p.m. All afternoon/evening extra-curricular activities and Polaris Evening Program classes have been cancelled.

Apparently, elementary kids here got out before 12:15. I was at the bus stop at 12:20--two hours before they would normally be there, as per the email--and the bus showed up.

The extra 1.5hrs that lapsed to get the older kids on busses was the straw that broke the camel's back. By then, busses were getting stuck and there certainly wasn't any after-school stuff going on.

The rest of it (a lot, actually) had to be stranded parents causing stranded students.
I should have clarified - Fulton County Schools decided at 1:45pm to let school out. They told us that buses were running as scheduled when the buses actually could not even get to the schools. I think that Cherokee is more used to this kind of thing since they are a bit further north. They and Cobb County schools clearly made better decisions.

[~Dan]

decocritter wrote:
Nathan just got shot down by news reporters about saying the weather reports said Atlanta was going to get a "dusting of snow". LOL (Not one weather report I saw on 4 local channels, said that._ The report then showed the Sunday, Monday and Tues a.m. weather bulletins and totally shot him down.

Didn't any of those thousands of people who got stranded have access to those same weather reports?

My area deals with much worse cold and snow every year BUT we don't rely on the government to decide for us when and how we travel; personal accountability for travel plans works up this way, why isn't the same down there? I've kept kids home from school when I felt that it made more sense to do so.