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Atlanta Gambled With Winter Storm and Lost
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Kim Severson reports at the NYT that by keeping schools and government offices open, and by not requiring tractor-trailers to use chains or stay out of the city's core, metropolitan Atlanta gambled and lost. "We don't want to be accused of crying wolf," said Gov. Nathan Deal, who pointed out that the storm had been forecast to just brush the south side of the city. If the city had been closed and the storm had been as light as some forecasters had told him it was going to be, he said, money would have been lost, and people would have complained. Tuesday's snowfall, that brought only 2-3 inches of snow to most of the Atlanta metro area, and the hundreds of thousands of motorists who flooded the metropolitan area's roadways as the storm moved in — created travel nightmares for commuters, truckers, students and their families. Some commuters were stuck in their vehicles up to 18 hours after they first hit the roads. Others abandoned their cars in or beside the road. Hundreds of students spent the night at school. Some surrounding cities, including Hiram, Woodstock, Sandy Springs and Acworth, opened emergency shelters for stranded motorists. "It's an easy joke made by Northerners," wrote Joe Sterling and Sarah Aarthun. "A dusting of snow shuts down an entire city and hapless drivers white-knuckle their way through a handful of flurries." Further North streets are salted well in advance of a coming storm but Atlanta doesn't have the capacity for that kind of treatment. "We simply have never purchased the amount of equipment necessary," said meteorologist Chad Myers adding Atlanta had plenty of warning. "Why would you in a city that gets one snow event every three years? Why would you buy 500 snowplows and salt trucks and have them sit around for 1,000 days, waiting for the next event?""
I live here in Atlanta. I work from home and I convinced my wife to stay at home (she's 7 months pregnant). So we didn't have to deal with the mess. One thing I would note though, there were probably 3 times in the last month where we were told we would have snow and it never happened. I think that might have made people feel like this was another false threat.
That's what they SHOULD have done. You may not be prepared for your one snow event every three years, but if you're not, you fucking shut your city down when the forecast calls for 2 inches! If that costs more than keeping that fleet of 500 vehicles and stockpile of magnesium chloride on hand, then maybe you should be better prepared the next time it happens!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ok granted Atlanta dropped the ball. But the drivers are being complete idiots. Probably due to poor basic science education.
Yes the road are unsalted. and most of the cars have summer tires... However to be dead stopped for days is just retarded.
Boadcast these instructions over the radio.
1. Keep Calm, don't panic.
2. Accelerate Slowly
3. Decelerate Slowly
4. Drive Slowly
5. Double or Triple your distance that you normally are between you and the car in font of you, to allow more time to stop.
I am seeing on the news complete idiots just hitting the gas spinning their wheels and driving out of control. The it is a Gas Pedal not a Gas Button, you can use it to drive at various speeds.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It means nothing. Recommended reading here:
http://www.1010tires.com/store/content/winter-tires-guide.aspx
The NWS nailed it. They described exactly what was going to happen.
The travesty was that **everybody** ignored the Winter Storm Warning that was issued in plenty of time to cancel school, make other arrangements for work. That was compounded with a situation where the roads went from dry to impassible in one hour, and then 5 million people all tried to drive home at once.
Disaster.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
This wouldn't be so embarrassing if the weather service would just delete all that old incriminating information.
Why would you buy 500 snowplows and salt trucks and have them sit around for 1,000 days, waiting for the next event?""
That's why you repurpose existing equipment. Snowplows themselves aren't a huge investment, and they last basically forever with little maintenance. Put a clause in your purchasing specs that all newly purchased garbage trucks and DOT dump trucks must have hookups for a plow. Retrofitting is expensive but if you're buying a truck anyway, the additional cost isn't much. Even dump trucks without special spreading equipment can be used; some dump trucks have small sliding gates on the main gate like this one. This is normally used for shoveling out small quantities of asphalt when patching roads, but in a pinch you could open them up and spread salt/sand on the road. Get creative! Making plans is cheap.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Borrow from where? All of the other cities in the area that also don't generally suffer snowstorms? More northerly cities that are probably busy using their equipment, thank you very much?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
As a side note, snow in Atlanta usually falls as large wet clumps that are already melting. This week was the first time in decades where Atlanta has gotten true, powder snow. So a lot of people here have no idea how to drive in this weather, and it only takes a handful of cars not being able to make it up a hill or hitting an ice patch to shut down an entire interstate.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Note that we got pretty much the same warning in the NOLA area. Out local governments decided to cancel schools for the whole day, since, while the weather was supposed to be fine in the morning, by the time the kids had to go home, it was going to be a nightmare.
Sure enough, it was a fine morning, but by mid-afternoon (when the kids would normally be coming home by bus) the freezing rain had started and the roads were getting increasingly unsafe (there are a LOT of elevated roadways here, what with the bayous and all, so freezing rain is a more serious problem here than it might be in other places).
And things stayed shutdown through Wednesday.
Of course, it's Thursday now, and temps are expected to be in the 50's today (and 70's by Saturday)....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
you fucking shut your city down when the forecast calls for 2 inches
"We don't want to be accused of crying wolf," said Gov. Nathan Deal, who pointed out that the storm had been forecast to just brush the south side of the city.
That was part of the problem. The forecast didn't call for 2 inches, it predicted that the ice/snow would miss Atlanta, though not by much.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
" We're simply not equipped to deal with the snow. We don't have snow plows or salting/sanding machines. "
I have 6 feet of snow in my front yard right now, the roads have been CAKED in 6 inches of hard packed ice and snow for weeks and Salt doesn't work at 3 degrees F. and I can easily drive the 45 miles to work and back every day in a minivan that has crap all season tires, new ones but crappy cheap bottom of the barrel tires.
One thing I know about the south is that you guys are happy to drive around on worn out bald tires, I work regularly in the south Huntsville, NOLA, etc and you guys think that buying tires is a sin. Get real tires and you too can drive on ice and snow easily that is 4X of the worst you got this year.
It is the drivers and their lack of driving ability. I've been to Atlanta many times, they barely know how to stay in their own lane let alone understand what those speed limit signs mean. I am thinking in the south a speed limit sign means that is as slow as you can go, and you should try to drive at 100mph 5 inches from the guy in front of you. And that is why when it get's slippery they all crash.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Several things seemed to make this event different from similar snowfall events that I've seen here in the last 20 years or so.
When snowfall occurs here it is usually a passing cold front event in an otherwise seasonable temperature period with daytime temps in the 40's or high 30's. So when snow falls, it pretty much melts in the streets until after 5PM or so when the temps start to drop. This time, we had several days of very cold weather preceding the snowfall and it was as if the streets' thermal mass had already been depleted. Snow hitting the streets initially melted but started to freeze into ice sheets quickly, more quickly than usual. By about 1PM many streets, especially surface streets with plenty of shade, were already covered with a thick ice sheet.
Atlanta has lots of creeks and small rivers with bridges. Atlanta is also quite a hilly place. Bridges ice before the main road, and bridges here are often at the bottom of a hill in both directions. So all the bridges and all the low-lying areas at the bottom of hills froze first. Many cars could not make it up the icy slope. Even minor slopes on surface streets especially became impassible due to the ice. Again, all this happened much earlier in the day than people have come to expect.
I live 4.5 miles from work, normally an 8-12 minute commute. I left my office at 12:45PM and it took me 2.5 hours and I had to use multiple alternative routes as I encountered several places where bridges and low-lying areas were impossible to get through. Luckily I know multiple routes home and was able to mentally plot the flattest route home and wind my way through interconnected neighborhoods. Even still, I used the GPS to avoid the dead ends that are common in neighborhoods. A co-worker left 15 minutes after I did, and 4.5 hours later made it as far as my house--he stopped for a bathroom break and made it home a full 12 hours after he left. My brother-in law left downtown at 2:30PM, two hours later managed to pick up his wife who works 1 mile away from where he works. At 8:30PM we used the computer traffic reports and google maps to get them off the interstate through neighborhoods, and by 1:30AM they had made it to our house. We figure it was another 8 hours to their house. Good thing he had taken his 4-wheel drive "hunting pickup" to work that morning.
Everyone started leaving offices after about 12PM-3PM, which normally would have been plenty soon but by then it was already too late on too many surface streets, so even the main roads which had been pre-treated and the interstates which have enough traffic to provide hot exhaust and tire friction heat to keep lanes open backed up--people exiting onto surface streets had no where to go.
Businesses and schools took a chance, given that the forecast had called for the snowfall to be south of the city. With much of the population in metro-ATL actually being north of the city, to forecast made many people in north metro-ATL figure there would be no real problem.
Schools in particular did everyone a disservice by staying open, then announcing early dismissals at 12:30PM or so. So tens of thousands of overwrought mommies and daddies jumped on the roads at the same time to make sure their precious offspring didn't have to risk a bus ride.
Also, the cell phone system was overloaded. So many people stuck in their cars for so long panicking chewed up all the bandwidth.
I'm currently down in Georgia on work-related travel. I'm in Columbus, but (hopefully) will by flying out of Atlanta later today. I've been here all week. I live in New Jersey.
Yesterday morning, I experienced perhaps the most dangerous driving conditions I've ever seen, and I've lived in Maine. What most people don't understand is that places that handle this type of weather regularly are prepared for it. I've been told that there are eight salt-spreading trucks in Georgia. Eight, for the entire state. How the fuck were they supposed to prepare? Purchase more snow management equipment on short notice? Maintain a large fleet of trucks for the rare occasions that stuff like this happens?
When I was driving in to work yesterday, the roads were nearly deserted. The few cars that were on the road were flying all over the place. While it's possible to drive [relatively] safely in such conditions, it's a skill that I don't expect Georgians to have. This just doesn't happen that often down here.
The roads were entirely covered in a solid sheet of ice. Ice, with no road salt, no gravel, no sand. If you live in an area that regularly receives some snowfall, you've never driven on anything quite like this, because you've got snow crews prepping roads before the snowfall, plowing for the duration of the snowfall, and then conditioning the road surfaces after the snowfall. Georgia has none of that. After having experienced this shit for myself, as a "yankee", all I can say is that I will never again make light of how the south "shuts down" for what I would consider to be mild flurries. Without any of the snow management gear, mild flurries (followed by a deep freeze) make for some truly horrendous driving conditions.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Why? 2-3 inches here and the only things we do different are leave earlier and drive slower. No chains. No pre-salting the roads. Just slow the fuck down until the roads get plowed or melt.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Yeah here in Galt's Gulch we've actually just put snow out of business. People said it was "inevitable" but it turns out that without government subsidies, snow just couldn't even keep frozen anymore. Things finally working right.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Surely they knew there was a significant probability for the snow to hit Atlanta. You don't have to make 100% accurate predictions to be able to prepare for the future. That's why weather forecasts give a probability of precipitation, rather than a binary rain/no rain prediction. If you know rain is likely, you can carry your umbrella just in case. The attitude should not be "You need to prove something bad will happen before I prepare for it," but rather "Let me know if something bad might happen so I can prepare for it."
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The problem in Atlanta isn't just the snow. It was the fact that they let everyone out to go home all at once. Ever been in rush hour traffic in Atlanta? Even without snow and ice, it's a fucking nightmare. That city has some of the worst rush hour traffic I've ever seen, even compared to L.A. Add to that icy/snowy roads that haven't seen even a hint of salt, a generally incompetent/corrupt city government, etc. and you can understand why it turned into a disaster.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Saw many people helping push stuck vehicles at least to get them off the road if nothing else. Saw just as many people screwing over the pushers by driving around the vehicle being pushed and then getting stuck themselves now in front of the original vehicle. So the pushers have to move forward to help this asshole before they can help the original person. And the process repeats!
After I managed to make it home (2.5 hrs to go 4.6 miles), I went outside and started try to help. I had some bags of sand left in my garden from a previous project and hauled those out to the road by my house as people were spinning their wheels there. I spread the sand over the closest patches of ice where I saw people stuck. Almost everyone rolled down their windows and said thank you, even though it meant they could move only about 20 yards further up the road. But one guy, who had to see me spreading sand in front of and under the 4 or 5 cars in front of him, as soon as I got done with the car in front of him and it pulled forward he immediately pulled forward and nearly clipped me *as* *I* *was* *spreading* *sand* to help him!
Out of sand, I started helping neighbors and other drivers push some vehicles. One lady was practically crying as she rolled down her window "Thank you thank you thank you". Most people a smart enough to roll down their window and take the advice we're giving them --"Cut you wheels over here toward the curb, there's some traction there." One guy *stayed* *on* *his* *phone* the entire time we were trying to help him and didn't do anything we asked him to do. Idiot.
Shutting the city down isn't free. Parents have to leave work to get home to children. What do you do when that parent is an ER nurse? Businesses have to close, city workers will cause traffic jams on the way home... and if nothing happens, everyone starts talking about how much money and time was wasted for nothing. You can't win.
Patently false. The problem is that the city leaders ignored the National Weather Service and relied on local forecasters. The 4AM NWS release clearly stated 1-3 inches of snow for Atlanta area and upgraded the Winter Storm Watch to a Warning. That was plenty early enough to have schools closed and the local TV/radio stations to warn people to not venture out. SNOW/SLEET AMOUNTS WERE INCREASED A LITTLE OVER NW GA TO CATCH FIRST BAND THIS MORNING...BUT STILL 0.5-1.0 INCH. IN MAIN BAND FOR THE AFTERNOON AND TONIGHT...HAVE SNOW/SLEET AMOUNTS OF 1-3 INCLUDING ATL METRO. GREATEST AMOUNT ALONG A BROAD LINE FROM LA GRANGE TO THOMASTON TO LOUISVILLE. BUT SOUTH OF LUMPKIN TO MACON TO SWAINSBORO LINE...ACCUM WILL BE 0.1-0.3 INCH MIX OF SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN WITH UP TO AN INCH OF LIGHT SNOW ON TOP. ALL THESE ACCUMULATION... OTHER THAN THE NW GA LIGHT BAND...WILL MEET WARNING CRITERIA SO HAVE CONTINUED WARNING AND EXPANDED THIS TO ANOTHER TIER OF COUNTIES INCLUDING ATL METRO AREA.
We get black ice on the highways here in Michigan all the time. The difference is that we don't panic. My truck loses its grip, I quickly stop doing the thing that made it lose its grip. If heavy snow starts, we don't all rush out into the streets at once. We tend to stagger our leave so that traffic has a chance to clear, and we have a chance to not be in the worst of it. We check road conditions before heading out. I've driven across multiple states during ice storms and blizzards without problem, and without plows or salt trucks providing any relief.
A million salt trucks wouldn't have saved Atlanta. The key is keeping your head and knowing what to do. Everybody in Atlanta buried their heads in the predicted snow, pretending it wouldn't happen, then lost their heads when it did. Their emergency management response was poor to non existant, and they paid the price. They're going to need a leadership change if they don't want this to happen again.
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
You think that never happens up north? That's par for the course much of the time. Folks down south (and yes I've lived there) have this notion that temperatures in the northern states go down to somewhere around the freezing point of nitrogen and stay there until April. Doesn't really work like that. The difference is that we have appropriate and adequate snow removal equipment and we are accustomed to dealing with snow and ice. I grew up in the heaviest part of the snow belt along Lake Erie and I didn't have a single snow day in four years of high school despite annual snowfall of between 60-80 inches per year. When I lived down south the only snow removal tool they had was a calendar.
Exactly. maybe every three years is too infrequent to have 500 snowplows ready, but that's a false dichotomy. The choice isn't between having 500 snowplows and turning into a disaster move every 3 years; surely there is a middle ground where you have an action plan that takes into effect when snow *might* hit the area (e.g. position resources so they can react quickly, and get you DPW personnel in their trucks and pay them overtime), and an action plan that goes into effect once the snow starts falling (do schools shut down? send kids home? shelter in place? What about police? Firefighters? What do you ask private business to do? And most importantly, what's the plan with the DPW?). Proper planning and intelligent deployment of resources is cheap (relatively speaking) but requires local authorities to think about more than just, "how do I get my brother in law a six figure do-nothing job" or "How do I accept that cheap mortgage as a gift without running afoul of bribery and corruption laws." But to claim that this is to be expected in a first world nation every 1000 days because you don't want to staff up like they do in the northeast is irresponsible
you fucking shut your city down when the forecast calls for 2 inches
"We don't want to be accused of crying wolf," said Gov. Nathan Deal, who pointed out that the storm had been forecast to just brush the south side of the city.
That was part of the problem. The forecast didn't call for 2 inches, it predicted that the ice/snow would miss Atlanta, though not by much.
Not true. *Early* forecasts suggested that, but subsequent updates by the National Weather Service *did* call for several inches of snow, and *did* include metro Atlanta in the impacted area, well in advance of the actual storm (by early Monday morning). There was plenty of time to prepare, had officials been paying more attention to the forecasts and less to the political impact of "crying wolf".
From The Weather Channel (emphasis mine):
Sunday 3:12 p.m.
First winter storm watch issued for Tuesday morning through Wednesday afternoon.
Includes south metro Atlanta counties Fayette, Coweta, Clayton, Henry, Rockdale into central Georgia.
Impacts: Snow accumulations of two or more inches. Sleet accumulations of a half inch or more.
Monday 4:54 a.m.
Winter storm watch now includes much of north and south metro Atlanta for Tuesday morning through Wednesday afternoon.
Impacts: Snow accumulations of 1/2 to 2 inches. Snow-covered roads could make travel difficult.
Monday 3:22 p.m.
Winter storm watch upgraded to a winter storm warning for south metro Atlanta into central Georgia. Winter storm watch remains posted for north metro Atlanta for Tuesday morning through Wednesday afternoon.
Impacts: Snow accumulations of 1 to 2 inches with locally higher amounts. Sleet accumulations around a half inch. Snow and ice covered roads will make travel difficult or impossible.
Monday 9:36 p.m.
Winter storm watch changed to a winter weather advisory for north metro Atlanta for Tuesday morning through Wednesday morning.
National weather service notes: Please understand that even a slight shift in the moisture could result in significant differences in snow amounts and may require an upgrade to warning.
Tuesday 3:38 a.m.
All metro Atlanta under a winter storm warning starting 9 a.m. Tuesday
Impacts: 1 to 2 inches of snow. Snow expected to begin mid-morning and last into Tuesday night. Snow-covered roads will make for hazardous driving conditions through Wednesday morning.
This wasn't black ice. It was a solid sheet of ice, curb to curb, sitting on every paved surface in the area. Without a single grain of salt, sand, or gravel sitting on top. Without a single gap of cleared road surface peeking through. If you've seen conditions like that in Michigan, you guys have the shittiest snow management system in the country, because unlike Georgia, you should be prepared.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Here's another timeline that's even more interesting because it interleaves the NWS advisories with the actions of various government/municipal entities and school officials:
Winter Storm 2014 Timeline (from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Atlanta's excuses are pathetic and laughable. The governor shows some really weak logical abilities. Limit traffic into the city and lose money...yeah, some will complain OR Let people become stranded on the roadways and all traffic into the city get blocked...many more will get much more angry. I know which path I would take.
I grew up in suburbs of Jackson, MS. Ever since the big Ice Storms of the early 1990s, Jackson and all surrounding municipalities salt the high-volume roads whenever snow or an ice storm is predicted...even if it's predicted to be a light snow or ice storm...even if it's supposed to barely miss the Jackson area. If Jackson, MS can keep equipment and supplies around to do this, Atlanta can too.
Also consider the recent severity of storms further north and the recent polar vortex. Atlanta's leadership is simply incompetent.
...I remember both the county (Cherokee) and the City of Atlanta talking about this 3 years ago when another light snow storm shut everything down. There were lots of words and phrases like "we'll be prepared next time" and "this won't happen again", followed by a few weeks of local news articles about how millions of dollars had been spent on new road treatment equipment and trucks and how materials had been stockpiled so that they'd be "ready" the next time.
I left my office at 5:15PM, luckily in a 4WD jeep, and got home (12 miles away) at 8:40 - and I gave quite a few people rides to various destinations who had already abandoned their cars (this one kid had walked from Southern Polytechnic to almost Wade Green [this is a long ways] without gloves and a light coat.) Mostly I ferried parents who had to walk to the local middle school/high school to pick up their kids when the schools shut down the buses (which was smart.) I went back out and got onto the local parking lot usually known and highway 92 to pick up some neighbors who were trying to walk home and eventually got back around 1:45AM - the roads at this time still PACKED with cars.
It wasn't until 1:15PM when I was almost home with my last pickup that I FINALLY saw a snow plow truck driving around (like an a**hole by the way) and his plow was up and he wasn't dropping any sand or salt.
It was the traffic nightmare from hell - and not only did the local governments utterly fail to plan for this event that everyone was aware of for days, they didn't react worth a sh** either.
The good news from all of this is that I saw an amazing number of good Samaritans helping out anybody they possibly could. There were people on quads ferrying people around and having a good time doing it. There were clumps of people all walking from their abandoned cars laughing and making the best of it. On most of the side roads, people were coming out of their houses in neighborhoods to help people navigate the zombieland-like fields of abandoned cars. My favorite was this old couple on Hwy 92 that were simply walking through the traffic handing out bottles of water to people stuck there. They were walking hand in hand lugging the water behind them (it was very sweet.) I saw lots of frustration, but surprisingly no hostility towards other people.
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hmmm. I've lived in the Minneapolis area for close to 50 years and I'm tempted to call BS on this one, - at least partly. The first snowfall of the year does lead to more spinouts and traffic delays than usual because at least some people have forgotten how to drive in that kind of weather.
But "panic reigns"?
Uh no
If you lived in Minneapolis proper you'd know that in residential areas (outside of snow emergency routes) you may not even see a plow for that small amount of snow. Most streets within a mile of our house have had layers of compacted snow and ice on them for weeks. Yes it is dryer here on the whole but we get plenty of days with precip when the temp is hovering around freezing. It is quite common to go from rain, to freezing rain, then to snow and have the whole mess freeze over.
My guess is that a big reason you find it easier to get here around in winter is that the other drivers know what they are doing. But the other reason is that city has the equipment and know how to deal with snow and ice.
Any snowplow that might have been sent out would have quickly become mired in the traffic jam that coincided with the first few flakes.
By the time there was anything to plow, the main roads were already deadlocked because the surface streets (which would have been plowed last anyway) were jammed due to traffic lights timed for mid-day rather than rush-hour operations and many many many iced-over low-lying areas that created car traps. Bridges over every minor creek sit at the bottom a tiny valley (it's up hill both ways!). These iced over almost immediately making it very difficult if not impossible to get through.
Many people abandoned their cars in the middle of the road. By morning the next day, there were still miles of interstate with bumper-to-bumper semi trailers interspersed with a few cars.
1000 plows would have done nothing. It was over (traffic wise) almost as soon as the first flakes of snow hit the ground. The hilly terrain combined with the below average temps for several days meant that roads, especially the various "feeder" surface roads, iced over almost immediately at least in the low-lying areas. Once a few cars failed to make it up some iced-over hill, that road was jammed. It took about 1 hour from the first few flakes before the traffic jam on surface streets backed up onto the interstates.
Realizing that the bridges would be a chokepoint, I managed to get home by plotting the flattest route with fewest bridges I could think of using interconnecting neighborhood streets. Once I got off the feeder roads and the main arteries, I was only facing snow and ice and not 100's of jammed-up cars. Still, it took me 2.5 hours to drive less than 5 miles. I still ended up reversing a hundred yards or so when I came out of one neighborhood and could not cross the feeder road due to traffic. Was able to get to a different outlet and get across. I also parked once (in a church parking lot) and scouted ahead on foot.
Fortunately, I was dressed appropriately, able and fully prepared to walk home should I have come to some point were I was stuck. I also had a fully-charged non-cellphone GPS that has pedestrian mode. Just in case.
Not like people I saw walking later. One woman was still trying to walk in stiletto heels. Men in dress shoes could barely stand upright. One woman had shopping bags over her shoes to protect them I guess, but this of course made everything very slippery (seriously plastic bag on snow?).
NOAA/NWS may be underfunded, but they do an absolutely outstanding job. They are the only government agency that I trust, implicitly, up to and including with my life (I live in "tornado alley"). NOAA/NWS has no political bent, they use real science to make increasingly more accurate forecasts, and better products come out almost every year. Huge portions of the US population and economy rely upon NOAA/NWS, not the least of which being every single person in an aircraft at any given time, from airline transport pilot all the way down to cropdusters - and of course the passengers.
You can insult my government all day, every day; I do it too. But don't question the ability of NOAA/NWS.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
You don't have to make 100% accurate predictions to be able to prepare for the future. That's why weather forecasts give a probability of precipitation, rather than a binary rain/no rain prediction. If you know rain is likely, you can carry your umbrella just in case. The attitude should not be "You need to prove something bad will happen before I prepare for it," but rather "Let me know if something bad might happen so I can prepare for it."
While you're right, I also think there is a more specific problem here. People are bad at making estimates based on probabilities -- "70% chance of rain? 30% chance of snow? Should I take action?"
The thing is -- the National Weather Service tries its best to keep the guesswork out of major weather events by issuing watches, advisories, and warnings. When a winter storm WARNING is issued, it means that there's a general consensus that this thing WILL occur and you should behave as if it will.
In this case, the NWS issued a winter storm warning at 3:38am on the day of the event, roughly 9 hours before snow started falling in Atlanta. Here's the official meaning of a winter storm watch and warning as put out by NWS in Atlanta:
Watch: Issued when the potential exists for 2 inches or more of snow in 12 hours, or 4 inches or more of snow in 24 hours. Also issued for potential of a quarter inch or more of freezing rain, or half an inch of sleet. In the North Georgia Mountains, the criteria are 3 inches in 12 hours or 4 inches in 24 hours.
Warning: Issued when a combination of snow, blowing snow, sleet, and/or freezing rain is likely to exceed warning criteria. Warning criteria are those detailed in the Winter Storm Watch.
In other words, a "warning" means it's pretty darn likely the thing is coming. Having lived in the northern U.S. for many years, I can think of a few times that a "warning" didn't really pan out, but not very many. A "watch" (or an "advisory," which is an intermediate level of sorts) is one thing, and can sometimes be wrong. A "warning" is meant to convey reasonable certainty that a major weather event will happen.
So, the average citizen doesn't need to necessarily concern himself/herself with probabilities -- these weather bulletins already contain significant information about how likely things are to happen.
Most people probably don't pay attention to these weather distinctions -- they just think "oh, there's some sort of weather alert." But they generally have very precise meanings.
For the general population to be ignorant of these meanings is perhaps expected. That's why governments and school officials need to understand these things and make reasonable calls -- but it appears they did not seem to know what "warning" meant in this case.
That's the disturbing thing. The NWS had stuff out saying there would be "dangerous" road conditions and that travel was not recommended well in advance of the snow.
I am a rare breed. I was born in Atlanta and lived here much of my life. However, I did live up in the snow belt for several years, and I can assure you that, while I wouldn't think twice about driving in snow in Ohio, I try to avoid it if at all possible here. It IS different. One thing that Atlanta has that most northern snow belt areas lack is an abundance of hills. These do make a difference. Atlanta has always had problems with winter weather, but the other thing about Atlanta and this area in general is that the weather changes very quickly. It was 11 degrees here this morning and this afternoon it may be in the mid 40's. By Sunday the mid 60's are forecast. The cost of providing for extensive snow or ice removal is just not worth it.
Those not familiar with the region don't understand that Atlanta is in Georgia and those might as well be two different countries. After a 2011 snow event the CITY of Atlanta did invest in snow removal equipment and did have a better plan to deal with it this time. From what I have seen and heard the CITY really did handle it better than it has ever been handled in the past. That said, most of the traffic problems and grid lock seen around the world was NOT on Atlanta city streets, but on Interstate highways and State roads. These thread all though Atlanta and they are maintained EXCLUSIVELY by the State. This is where the politics and incompetence comes in.
State government here has been on a mission to downsize itself and transform itself into a jobs program for friends of well connected state politicians since about the year 2000 or earlier. The state highway department which is the organization that is responsible for all of the STATE roads, whether in Atlanta or not, has shrunk from over 7,000 employees to just over 4,000 just in the last few years. Many of the departures were by experienced people who left for the private sector or to county and municipal employers who now provide better compensation and benefits than does the State of Georgia. The head of the State Highway department, has traditionally been an engineer with experience. The current head is a political appointee who has no engineering degree and no experience in this area at all. This is just one example, but throughout the state, for well over a decade, there has been an erosion of competence in providing the services that the state is responsible for providing. This is not due to the remaining employees, who do the actual work, but due to poor planing, incompetent management and complete lack of understanding by the elected officials of what is required to run the largest state East of the Mississippi river.
There are actually two Atlantas: (1) The City of Atlanta and (2) The Atlanta Metropolitan Area.
The City of Atlanta has a population of 432,000 and its mayor is Kasim Reed. Reed is an up-and-coming politician in the Democratic Party; he has been on "Meet the Press" and other Sunday morning talk shows a lot. Reed looked very bad during the 2011 Snowstorm, so since then the City has purchased approximately 70 snowplows & salt trucks. It has also trained its crews to operate that equipment. City crews were out and about on Tuesday and City-owned arterial streets were pretty passable.
The City of Atlanta also owns the Atlanta airport, so the City actually has weather forecasters on its payroll.
The Atlanta metropolitian region that surrounds the City of Atlanta has a population of 4.5 million spread over 20 suburban counties and a couple dozen small cities. The majority of these suburbs are very Republican and are the base of voters that elected Governor Deal. For example, Cobb County, where the Atlanta Braves professional baseball team are planning to move to, is the home of former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The Suburban counties and cities have not invested in snowplows and instead rely of the statewide Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). GDOT does a really good job given what they have to work with -- they only have something like 120 snowplows for the *entire* state of Georgia. It never snows all over Georgia at once, so GDOT just moves its plows to where they are needed.
The other complicating factor is that about 1.2 million of the 4.5 million suburbanites commute into the City of Atlanta every day.
What happened Tuesday was the perfect clusterf---. About noon, all of the 1.2 million commuters all attempted to leave Atlanta at about the same time.... this was actually documented by the Georgia Navigator traffic system (http://www.511ga.org). These commuters managed to leave the City of Atlanta because the City had treated its roads, but then they hit the Interstate highways and expressways that are plowed and sanded by the GDOT. .... GDOT simply could not keep up because GDOT's statewide crews were also being used elsewhere around the state. The roads clogged and then what GDOT snowplows and sanders that were out got stuck in that traffic.
Because he's the boss? The guy in the hotseat? The person they're paying to make decisions?
The mayor may be advised by his engineering or public safety guys, but, in the end, it's his decision.
And if he says it's not his decision to make, the wrong guy got elected mayor.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"