Slashdot Mirror
Massive Storm Buries US East Coast In Snow and Ice
First time accepted submitter anthonycarlson writes "The second wintry storm in two weeks to hit the normally balmy south U.S. has encrusted highways, trees and power lines in ice, knocking out electricity to nearly a half-million homes and businesses." Kids are out of school, and houses are out of power, in much of a region that normally gets much rarer and lighter snowfall. If you're socked in, or if you're in the East Coast storm zone but have to venture out anyhow, what's been your experience? Some of the pictures are pretty impressive. Update: 02/13 17:24 GMT by T : Google Maps has a handy guide to weather alerts, shelters, and traffic info for those affected by the storm. (Hat tip to Chris DiBona.)
Kids making snowmen is considered geeky
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Everything is coated in snow and ice, we still have power and internet. Our kids have been home since Monday school dismissal and depending on how much thawing happens today, they may well miss school tomorrow as well.
just looks like minnesota in an average winter...
Up here where the US cold comes from it is nice and sunny and clear. Cold, but clear beautiful days.
For you Yanks, here is the Canadian Forecast, temperatures in celsius
http://weather.gc.ca/canada_e....
I think everyone here learned from the Snowpocalypse last week. Most people stayed off the roads.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
The GOES imagery has looked really cool as of late. As I've watched the storm travel west and then north, it's been really awesome to see the progression and the effects of the Coriolis force.
Keep the faith, share the code
-30C with the wind chill.
Americans need to toughen up. Cancelling work and school because of a bit of ice and snow? Oi, your forefathers who blazed the trails to the west and through the mountains must be spinning like tops in their graves.
How well is your local government set up to handle hurricanes? Oh, they aren't, because you never get hit by hurricanes?
Well, that's basically the issue in the South right now; perhaps you should go ahead and knock that chip of your shoulder.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
America is a big place. I live in North Dakota and we still had to go to work when it was -50 wind chill/ -30 actual temperature. The East side of the country is just not used to it like the rest of us up North.
As another poster said, this isn't fair. Lots of us drive with winter tires, I doubt anyone down there has even heard of them.
We (most Canadians) have the equipment and machinery to clear snow, maintain highways, and the experience to get around in these conditions. They don't.
Bad weather isn't a problem, unexpected bad weather is. Where I used to live (in the UK, so no red vs blue today), we had one day of snow pretty much every year. The city council decided to be very cautious and ensured that they had enough salt and grit available to keep the roads clear if they had a one-week snowfall. One year, we had two weeks of solid snowfall and temperatures below freezing and the whole place ground to a halt. Meanwhile, places a bit further north were fine because they typically had snow all winter and so had prepared for it. Now, you could argue that my council should have prepared for the snow better, but in the 10 years that I lived there I only saw more than one day a year of snow that one winter - maintaining the equipment reserves to handle it every year would have been expensive and you can bet people would have complained about the waste of taxpayers' money.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
+1C, all snow soon melted away.
Looks like Slashdot's newest experiment is to pop an ad before you get to the article. Looks like I'll have that disabled in 5...4...3..
On the same note, you northerners handled hurricane Sandy (cat-2 @ northeast) like wimps. Just wear some boots next time.
I lived through 14 Minnesota winters, and after a similar period in the South, I can say they're really not similar.
Southern pines are spectacular, much taller than those typical in Minnesota, because they can grow for years without being beaten down by the weather. When once in a decade or so they get coated with ice, the result is chaos -- whole trees snapping five feet above ground, crashing through attics into living rooms, tearing down power lines along the way. It sounds like cannon fire echoing through the woods.
The problems of winter hitting the South are not limited to lack of equipment, preparation, or winter driving skills. Nature just isn't ready for it.
It continuously amazes me that people would easily pay in excess of 50k in order to get the largest SUVs ever, yet they would fight teeth and nails against an one time 3k fee to get their power lines buried. The SUVs have been proven useless during the ice storms, while having electrical power was proven to be priceless.
But during that week that they were prepared for, they had the chance to order additional salt and grit. At a higher price, of course, but still. While keeping a 2 weeks stock all years may not be worth it, a week (at least down here) would be enough to pull additional stuff from the next step in the supply chain, if forcast indicates so.
bickerdyke
When I was living down south, I usually ran my tires down to the wires as you can mostly get away with that down there. A good set of new all-season radials goes a long way toward making those crappy roads passable, even with rear wheel drive. Other problem down there is they're not really set up to clear the roads at all, so you get a lot more ice and snow on the road than you do in northern regions. Where I live now I swap my tires out a lot more often and they put some stuff down that keeps the roads more-or-less melted. Though a few days ago I drove in to work on top of a 2" thick layer of ice and didn't have a problem with it. Well... other than the huge temptation to do donuts in the parking lot on top of 2 inches of ice...
Having had 5 days of power outages in the last 4 years, I'm pretty much over expecting the power company to deliver power when I need it most. A backup generator is high on my list of priorities.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm also in NY. I've lived in Central, Upstate and now Western NY. Without the plows and salt trucks, 90% of the people here wouldn't fare much better than those in Georgia. Why don't they have that equipment? You try explaining to taxpayers that they need to buy and maintain millions of dollars worth of equipment for a scenario that might not happen. It's the same reason we don't have a whole lot of equipment to handle hurricanes or earthquakes here. Sure, it could happen, but it's rare enough that it's not worth the money to put in a whole lot of preparation.
I have lived in Connecticut for 17 years. There is nothing rare about the amount of snow that is falling today. It doesn't happen every week, but 12 inches (or whatever we are going to get today) is not exactly Biblical. Mild winters are the rare events.
Five days of power outages in four years? I envy you. Where I grew up, it wasn't unusual to lose power several times in the summer to lightning and once or twice in the winter to ice. Since moving to the suburbs, we haven't had an outage last more than few seconds in the last four years but I still keep flashlights in every room and a stock of lanterns in the basement. I'm also equipped to run the essentials off of the car if necessary, although odds are I'll never have to.
When you get a storm like this once every ten years, it isn't cost-effective to keep equipment worth tens of millions of dollars around for years just gathering dust. When you don't have the equipment, you are ill-equipped to deal with winter weather, and it's much more difficult to manage conditions like this when they do occur. To put it bluntly, the south is doing exactly the right thing: shelter and wait it out.
Kathy Davies Muzzey of Wilmington, N.C., said she hid the car keys from her husband, John, on Tuesday night because he was thinking about driving to Chapel Hill for the Duke-UNC basketball game. He has missed only two games between the rivals since he left school in the late 1960s.
Yeah, driving in a snow storm for a fucking college basketball game. Good to see people's priorities are straight!
Soo Keith of Raleigh left work about a little after noon, thinking she would have plenty of time to get home before the worst of the snow hit.
Instead, Keith, who is three months pregnant, drove a few miles in about two hours and decided to park and start walking, wearing dress shoes and a coat that wouldn’t zip over her belly.
Do people not read the news or weather forecasts or something?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
We got a light, dry snow over night. Its now lightly raining, packing the top layer. If you haven't started shoveling, do it now before it gets too heavy. I've got about 14" and the top 3 are as heavy as than the bottom 11.
No ice yet, though its 31.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
It was -5F yesterday and we got about 4 inches of snow. Nothing closed, the roads were fine, traffic was fine, and I even went out to eat. I heard parts of the East coast were acting like it was WWIII because 2 inches of snow was coming and people were known to drive 5MPH through it. I think everyone out there just needs to grow some balls and learn how to drive. I believe WI got around 3-4 feet of snow this winter so far.
As for the power outage from a tiny amount of snow? Umm...you built it wrong. Last time we got 8 inches, one traffic light failed. That's it.
We never want the south to be prepared for snow. Having a day off (or being forced to work from home) is exactly why we panic when it snows.
Right, because places which have palm trees and warmer climates are entirely prepared for stuff like this.
Hell, I go to Myrtle Beach in the middle of winter to get away from winter here ... and I can assure you, snow and ice would happen infrequently enough to cause complete havoc, because it's a place where the golf courses are open year round.
Not so long ago (1999) Toronto called in the army because they had a lot of snow -- if a Canadian city which normally gets winter can be crippled by it, imagine a place where snow and ice is a rare and exceptional event.
Never underestimate just how much of a mess what we call a small amount of snow can cause in a place which doesn't normally have to deal with it.
If you have alligators and palm trees, it doesn't take much to really throw stuff into disarray.
Seriously, don't be a douche.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Monster lizard ravages east coast! Mayors in five New England cities have issued emergency requests for federal disaster relief as a result of a giant lizard that descended on the east coast last night! Officials say that this lizard, the worst since '78, has devastated transportation, disrupted communication, and left many hundreds homeless!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Probably /. expects some people to correlate this snow event with global warming, climate changes etc... Because that storm is rather special..
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
No kidding. Here in FL, that would barely have qualified as a rainstorm
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Here in Eastern Massachusetts, we do get hit by hurricanes as well. And admittedly, they're hardly the strength that hits Florida or the Outer Banks, but they can still cause significant damage to the area. If your town's infrastructure isn't designed to handle the ice and snow, I both understand and offer my sympathy. However, I do look in amazement at scenes of the roadside carnage in the south caused by what I perceive as a dusting of snow. It's the same look I get when I complain to my store managers in Florida about it being oppressively hot in Boston when it's 'only' 96 degrees in August.
In all fairness, it was a *CATEGORY 2* hurricane. Ooooooh! LOL!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This weird BSD spam has been around for something like a decade already.
...and what kind of road congestion does Canada have?
The whole nation of Canada has 35m people. Metro Boston has around 5m. Metro NYC has 20m.
In Boston on a good day the roads are jam packed and your commute takes way longer than it should. Throw in an accident along the way and your commute can be a major pain.
Now consider dramatically slower travel speeds, a mere handful of fender benders. That commute is just not worth it. What's the point of having your 1hour commute turn into 2 or 3? each way.
Just one warning: when the food supplies collapse due to global warming, we will eat the deniers like you first.
While my parents moved to NC to avoid the winters, they are getting hit hard and in upstate NY we are barely getting a dusting.
AJ Henderson
Hurricane Irene trashed half the bridges in Vermont two years ago, washed entire houses off their foundations, and washed away many miles of road. By the time the ski season started, all the roads had been rebuilt, sometimes involving adding sixteen feet tall fill for miles. The bridges hadn't been rebuilt, but we'd put in temporary bridges so traffic could pass. The big problem was and remains housing, but local government has done a lot to ameliorate the situation.
There was a pretty good article recently about the fiasco in Atlanta; apparently part of the problem there is that there are so many different local governments who don't coordinate with each other that it's very difficult to address problems caused by weather.
None of that negates the point that ice all over the roads is damned hard to deal with if you don't have enough sand trucks and salt piles. But we have that problem in Vermont too, and a big part of every town's budget and the state's budget is allocated to dealing with it when winter comes. Cold weather happens in the South too, and it can be planned for, but doing it costs money. I suspect that's the biggest part of the problem. In Vermont, we have no choice—these events happen _every_ winter, so elected officials who don't plan for it aren't around the following winter. In Atlanta, the feedback loop is much weaker.
Dear Mother Nature,
You win at winter. Now please give us spring and win that one even better.
New York City uses garbage trucks as snowplows. There are ways of making it work.
Sorry, but in the south, snow is not a big deal either. Plows can plow snow, and cars can drive reasonably well in snow. The problem is that in the south, ice is at least as frequent an occurrence as snow. Winter storms often occur during a temperature inversion, meaning we have warm (above freezing anyway) humid air aloft and below freezing air at ground level. Precipitation falls as rain, and depending on the temperature of the rain and the height and temperature of the ground level air, it will either fall as sleet, or worse, as rain which freezes on impact. We often have 1/4" or more of freezing rain. I have seen greater than an inch of freezing rain in the past. In my state, we have had freezing rain three times this winter, and we have had snow twice. Snow is not a big deal for cars, and plows can remove it. Ice is crappy to drive on and plowing is useless.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
As another poster said, this isn't fair. Lots of us drive with winter tires, I doubt anyone down there has even heard of them.
We (most Canadians) have the equipment and machinery to clear snow, maintain highways, and the experience to get around in these conditions. They don't.
DC is generally comic in snow, mostly because the drivers just don't know how to drive in it. I remember seeing a UPS truck try to get unstuck for an hour with no progress.
Around New York, you get a lot of people who basically know how to deal with it, but they don't always do it very intelligently. The left and right turn lanes on United States Route 1 in New Rochelle, for example, have been covered in snow for a week and they don't bother to plow them, instead just keeping the main lanes clear and letting people turn out of those.
In Canada, they are used to snow and *know* they they could get another six feet of it to deal with in the next two or three storms, so they keep the roads cleared *WAY* back. The undivided two-lane highways with unpaved shoulders are plowed to ten feet off the road in either side.
They call that "massive snow"...
I have 6 feet of it in my front yard, and that is not massive. Houghton,MI I have seen 12 feet on the ground. THAT is massive.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm waiting to see if my SFO to CLT flight will be cancelled this morning. Oh, right. This isn't Facebook.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
"so you get a lot more ice and snow on the road than you do in northern regions."
Ive been driving on 6 inches of ice and snow in the roads for the past month. Yes this is plowed roads. I have 8 inches of it hard packed in my driveway.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
How earthquake prepared is your city?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not really. How many people do you think can deliver tons of salt and grit (in quantities of a factor of ten more than they normally sell you) at a few days notice, in unusually bad weather? And if you find someone, then you have to distribute it (something that's usually done in the summer, when the roads are clear and you can put it in strategic locations where the gritting trucks can easily collect it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Maybe because this falls squarely under the "stuff that matters" part of the old tagline?
Take it weasy. Shoveling snow causes e lot of heart attacks every yeah. Shovel lightly, shovel often.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Shut up.
Either learn the science and put forth something else based on science, or shut up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm in Wisconsin. We don't all have 4x4 drive, tire chains are ILLEGAL, I have no kitty litter in my trunk, and ice happens all the time. I drive a shitty little versa with 2 year old all-season tires, most people in Wisconsin drive normal 2 wheel drive cars, I drove into work in snow and white-out this morning and the plows have not even left the county garage yet. Made it in just fine, drove 10 under the speed limit, made sure to keep 5 car lengths away from the car ahead, and looked ahead for anyone slipping out in front of me.
You people down south have this outsized idea of what a snowstorm is, and what we in the north do about it. Sure, a 1 foot overnight dump needs plows, and salt keeps the fender benders down.. However:
In reality, the problem you have with this weather is not the temperature, the amount of ice, or your spending on road crews, amount of experience with snow.
It is YOU.
Almost to a person you don't drive safely even in good weather. I've been down there and even grandmas' tailgate on completely un-crowded roads. You speed to such a degree that when people go the posted speed limit you all totally go bonkers road rage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B-Ox0ZmVIU
Hell, many people think you should be arrested for going the posted speed limit!
I've been down south and saw in one day 10 cars/truck in the ditches because of RAIN. Fucking RAIN. You guys know what that is right? It happens, you know, as weather down there all the time?? Right?
Slow the fuck down, start reducing speed half a block away from the stop sign or curve, look further ahead than your shitty wafflehouse coffee in your hand, stop tailgating, accelerate slowly, don't be Yee-Haww idiots.. Also, did I mention slow the fuck down?
. However, I do look in amazement at scenes of the roadside carnage in the south caused by what I perceive as a dusting of snow.
That is a dusting of snow normally on black from the freezing/thaw the night before. Folks here in the south do not normally, if ever, drive with these types of conditions. These are the people that live by "Hey, Bubba, watch this?". These are people that feel no guvmunt is going to tell them to not drive by God...thus we get carnage.
As an ex-pat northern I know better and stay safe in my home (I'd say warm, but the heat pump stops working well when the temps stay 30 for three days.). By this afternoon it will warm up enough to start the melt. Then I can drive without worrying about some DIxie Yahoo thinking he's driving at Daytona and putting a four wheel slide into the side of my car.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
But I'm working on a project with our DC team at work... I don't think much is going to get done on that project this week, as their internet is not the most reliable at the moment. >.>
I don't know if it means anything, but in my city, even the insurance forms have Godzilla clauses.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
You're comparing apples to oranges. Bridges flooding out and getting fixed in time for ski season is a different effort then then immediate issues of snow/ice covered roads and little to no DOT equipment to handle it. The NE is prepared for snow because it is always there, each winter. The last two years we went sans snow all winter. Why pay for what you don't need.
I will give props to our local DOT this round for they really did respond better and the roads are much better and more important, people did not try to drive around.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
That's what those companies are specialized in.
Few cities could stock the material needed for a normal winter. So re-stocking during a winter is the norm. Only at higher prices (which evens out during warmer winters) and slower than in summer. But that's what you've got your inital stockpile for: Cover for the first week or so until roads are clear enough to get the restocking rolling.
That's definitly the way how it's handled here, just saw a documentation about it a few weeks ago. Companies can definitly deliver salt and grids during the winter. Perhaps not during days 1-3 of a fresh snowstorm, but in calmer conditions between them.
bickerdyke
Maybe, but as we all learned from South Park, Canada only has one road for all those 35 million Canadians.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I do look in amazement at scenes of the roadside carnage in the south caused by what I perceive as a dusting of snow.
That's your problem right there. It wasn't "a dusting of snow." It was wintry mix, complete with 1/4 thick sheets of solid ice on all the roads that formed as people were trying to get home.
Plus, honestly, if 80% of the people in Atlanta had panicked and jumped on the roads in the same half hour in good driving conditions, you'd have had hours long snarls anyway. The ice that trapped us in transit made it much, much worse, but it would have been bad without it. Probably not, "abandon your car and walk home because it's low on gas, and the gas station 1 mile away is about 2 hours away in this traffic" bad, but still bad.
It's the same look I get when I complain to my store managers in Florida about it being oppressively hot in Boston when it's 'only' 96 degrees in August.
People in the South are spoiled by air conditioning. I know, because I lived in Oregon for a few years and didn't understand what it was like to live in a house without AC in that weather until it happened.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
A preemptive strike against the machines, eh?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Kids making snowmen is considered geeky
It's considered human.
Storms on this scale test infrastructure to the limits --- and it is interesting to see how and why things break. Burying power lines not always the answer
As for beta boycotts and related matters: the comments posted to Slashdot may be fewer, but, on the whole, appear to me saner and more focused than any I've seen here in quite some time. I intend to enjoy this while I can.
I work from home you insensitive clod!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
http://www.newyorker.com/onlin...
It must've missed New York City. I live in Manhattan and commuted to Brooklyn, but I didn't see anything I'd call a "massive storm". Just a light touch of snow...
Still, I wish we'd get this snow on the weekends instead of the work days, I'd really like the opportunity to go out and enjoy it.
To be fair...Toronto was entirely, and still entirely mocked for that... even by Torontonians. It just came out of the blue.... most of us just grabbed our shovels and were 'meh, moron'.
No kidding. Here in FL, that would barely have qualified as a rainstorm
I've flown out of town in the feeder band of an oncoming hurricane and in the teeth of a Florida thunderstorm. The hurricane was the less turbulent ride.
and it isn't about not having "removal equipment". This type of weather happens all the time, especially in the NE.
The really thing we learn from this is that cars have reached a level of sophistication/tech that we all think we can travel in any weather. In reality, that's not true, we can be safer in any weather, but not capable. So the same rule of the last 50yrs still applies: 4+ of snow== stay at home. Walmart can wait. Let the crews do their job.
I'm also in NY. I've lived in Central, Upstate and now Western NY. Without the plows and salt trucks, 90% of the people here wouldn't fare much better than those in Georgia. Why don't they have that equipment? You try explaining to taxpayers that they need to buy and maintain millions of dollars worth of equipment for a scenario that might not happen. It's the same reason we don't have a whole lot of equipment to handle hurricanes or earthquakes here. Sure, it could happen, but it's rare enough that it's not worth the money to put in a whole lot of preparation.
Something nobody seems to be taking into consideration. Most equipment will suffer as much or more from not being used as it will from being used. In Atlanta, a fleet of heavy snow equipment would likely as not be half-deteriorated by the time it was next needed. And it's hard to persuade the taxpayers that you need to pay for all that servicing in normal years winter is simply the season when you switch the A/C off.
Poolesville is a small town about an hour outside of Washington D.C. Our population is only about 5,500 and it's basically a farm community that grew into more of a distant bedroom community for DC metro area employees in the last decade or two.
Around here, they've been very efficient at clearing a path through the snow, even though we've got about 11-12 inches of it this morning (and expect 2 more in a second wave late this afternoon).
I've noticed with many of the more rural Maryland communities, they seem to do better job plowing snow and keeping the roads clear than the bigger cities do. I'm sure the fact we have a lot fewer roads to clear is a big part of it, but some of the towns like Brunswick are very hilly, so you'd think they'd be a difficult challenge. Nonetheless, they seem to have workers who have a real commitment to doing the job well, and perhaps the more rural upbringing makes them more adept at handling heavy equipment like snowplows and dump trucks? (I'm sure many of them know their way around large tractors and other farm equipment.)
And come march, they've let a thousand new submitters spring.
All with geeky stuff like this.
In a nutshell, it's just a power inverter connected directly to the battery - cig lighter inverters have a max draw of about 15A before they blow the fuse on most cars, so you'll either want a permanently wired solution (like I did) or just use alligator clips that come with most 400+ watt inverters. You just need to make sure it can provide as power as you expect to draw. Items like a refrigerator or freezer only need to run once or twice a day to maintain sufficient cold (as long as you open them sparingly) and will usually draw under 400 watts if they're relatively modern. Likewise, you can power fluorescent or LED bulbs with a measly 400 watt inverter. Air conditioning, electric stoves and dryers are the only major appliances I would really hesistate to run off an inverter but even those can be planned for.
It's not as convenient or robust as a whole-home generator, but it's a hell of a lot more affordable for short-term power outages (a couple days up to a week or two). If you really want to be prepared or to use larger inverters, equip your car with a second battery that is also charged from the alternator. I got my 400W inverter for $15 on sale from NewEgg and it's sufficient to run anything I might need for an outage of up to a week. Harbor Freight sells 750W inverters for $45 and 2000W inverters for $160 (and that's before their ubiquitous 25% off coupons).
The real drawback is if you need your car at the same time you need to power something in the house, but it's an emergency measure that's just to hold over until regular power is restored. Combine it with some common sense preparation, like keeping extra gas in the garage, and it's a pretty good solution to keeping things going during an outage. Hell, I'd recommend just getting an inverter in the 200W-400W range that can run off the cig lighter socket just in case you're camping or chilling at a parking area or don't want to buy extra 12V car adapters for your laptop, tablet, etc - many come with USB charging ports as well.
Oblig XKCD
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
if you look at the historic snowfall for NYC, we are in the average zone now
last few years we have had the snowfall in one or two huge storms, but this year its averaged over weeks
go look at the data for the late 1800's pre global warming times. average for NYC is in the 40' for inches of snow. which is what we are at now
the global warming nuts scream catastrophe no matter what kind of weather we have which is why no one listens to them anymore
I think it's a poor comparison. An earthquake, hurricane, or tornado is magnitudes more destructive than a little bit of snow even with black ice on the roads (I'd say we are prepared, as Boston was hit with all three over the course of 2012). However, unlike the snowy, icy situation where my in-laws live outside of Raleigh, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and volcanic eruptions are just as dangerous if you drive 20mph instead of 70 on the highway. With snow, it's often the difference between arrive home safely and a serious car accident.
My university refuses to cancel classes. They are sore because they had to cancel classes due to snow for the first time in twenty years last year. Sent from my astrophysics class.
As another poster said, this isn't fair. Lots of us drive with winter tires, I doubt anyone down there has even heard of them.
We (most Canadians) have the equipment and machinery to clear snow, maintain highways, and the experience to get around in these conditions. They don't.
On top of that, we don't need more machinery and equipment... why waste tax dollars on such a rare occurrences? At the same time, during "snowpocalypse" (Atlanta two weeks ago) the extra sanders, salters, and plows were useless - because they couldn't get through the gridlocked traffic that was stuck on the roads. The online traffic map went from green at 12:00 to BLACK at 12:30... the trucks couldn't get through. I grew up on Long Island, and drove in plenty of snow and slush - but not ICE. This was ICE. And Long Island is relatively flat compared to Northern GA, which is at the tail of the Appalachians... all the problems happened on hills.
Yes, people were being terrible drivers, but it's a confluence of a number of things that caused the headache; we were lucky this time mainly because the ice accumulated over night instead of midday. People were already home, and just didn't go to work.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The problem is this was purely ice, not snow. It looked like snow on the news, but near the street surface it was just solid ice. I learned to drive in NY, and had plenty of driving in snow, but never had as treacherous a drive as I did coming home from work two weeks ago in Atlanta. On top of that, while GEMA has more sanders/salters and plows than it did before, during "snowpocalypse" they couldn't get anywhere because the commuters had the entire metro Atlanta area in gridlock. Unless they were going to plow through thousands of stopped cars, they were useless.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
JIT logistics are fine for manufactured goods, but for minerals and other things that you have to mine out of the ground, it is not possible. For things like salt, you place your order in the spring for next winter -- they then dig it out of the ground and deliver it to you sometime in the summer. Once the ground is frozen they can't dig it out anymore and the supply that is in the chain is all that there is.
Sure, some places keep some spare around, but if every city thinks they can just order it on a whim there won't be enough supply. The midwest (USA) has run out of salt for a couple weeks now. This winter was much harsher than everybody expected and they were expecting about 10 - 15 storm days this season (days of active snowing/icing) -- we've had over 30 this year alone. All the stores are out of salt and the community supplies are done.
Give us back our snow! --Sad Washington Ski Bum
The USA - the technically most advanced country - still is not able to put powerlines underground. Why???
Because it is roughly 8X as expensive and the US is a HUGE country. There are plenty of underground powerlines, particularly in dense urban areas like Manhattan. But the population across most of the country is rather spread out, much more so than is probably entirely sane. (Thanks city planners!) The population density simply isn't enough in most places to justify the extra cost. Servicing underground lines is also more expensive so while you might not have as many weather related issues you'll spend more for the issues you do have.
A short (but interesting) read over at National Geographic about history of road salt. From the article, it takes about 10-14 days for a reorder of salt.
your forefathers who blazed the trails to the west and through the mountains must be spinning like tops in their graves
I've always admired the way our forefathers dealt with this sort of thing - like the Donner party.
Here in Eastern Massachusetts, we do get hit by hurricanes as well. And admittedly, they're hardly the strength that hits Florida or the Outer Banks
Not lately, but 1638 was a doozy.
The whole nation of Canada has 35m people. Metro Boston has around 5m. Metro NYC has 20m.
The greater Toronto area has about 5.5 million residents. It is by FAR the largest city in Canada and Toronto City has roughly the same number of residents as Chicago making it either the 4th or 5th largest city in North America and the 8th largest metropolitan area. It's bigger than Boston by about a million people. Toronto is a huge sprawling metropolis.
I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure of Toronto rush hour but I get to at least once a year and it is pretty bad. The 401 passing through Toronto is the busiest stretch of highway in North America.
Basically Toronto doesn't remotely resemble the rest of Canada and I've been in enough of Canada to know.
Funny thing, I did the same thing when Sandy hit New York. Poor babies, hit by a weak tropical storm, and they're carrying on like it was the end of the world...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Most equipment will suffer as much or more from not being used as it will from being used. In Atlanta, a fleet of heavy snow equipment would likely as not be half-deteriorated by the time it was next needed
You don't buy dedicated snow removal trucks. You use multi-purpose earth moving equipment that works in the summer too, dump trucks for spreading salt, have plow mounts on city service vehicles, etc. Stockpile salt for when you need it every 5th year. Have a plan in place to get those vehicles into action when a storm is coming. A little preparation and planning goes a long way.
As another poster said, this isn't fair. Lots of us drive with winter tires, I doubt anyone down there has even heard of them.
While this is true, winter tires still don't do much if there's 1/2" to an inch of ice on the road, as there was in some parts of the South yesterday and this morning. And even if they have salt -- which they often don't -- there was too much ice to keep up the melting.
A few inches of snow is not a big deal if you're used to driving it and have proper tires. However, I've lived in many different parts of the U.S., and an inch of ice is enough to shut down things in most places -- north or south.
A couple of points. Hurricane Sandy was not bad because of its wind strength or because of the amount of rain it put down. The problem was how much area it covered. Most of the areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy would have done OK if it hadn't caused serious damage on the areas where they normally draw emergency support from as well. The second point is that the people who were devastated by Hurricane Sandy are not the one's making fun of the way the South is handling this winter storm, because they are busy digging out of the the same storm and understand that it is a pretty nasty thing to deal with.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I think our boys in the UK already solved this problem.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Never underestimate just how much of a mess what we call a small amount of snow can cause in a place which doesn't normally have to deal with it.
I have always lived in the mid-west. Actually, most of it in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, and went to school up on Lake Superior. Driving in snow and ice should be second nature to us.
However, I see the same behavior up north at the beginning of winter. Some people who are use to driving full speed all summer and fall suddenly have a hard time dealing with the snow...and these are people who grew up in these areas. It takes a little time for many to get their "snow legs". Obviously, this isn't everyone and you would expect people to think a little before jumping in the car the first time... but it happens anyway.
I love the sound of distortion in the morning -- webcommando
I currently live in Pennsylvania (near Allentown), and used to live in Atlanta. I've driven in snow in both states, and snow is definitively worse in Georgia.
Sure PA gets more snow than GA will. Before any snowstorm you will see salt spreaders on the road dusting the road, and huge snowplows can be seen idling in the median of the interstates waiting for the snowfall. PA gets snow every year so PA does have the resources. Drivers in PA know how to drive in snow. I don't know how people in Wisconsin do it, but in PA it is not 10 miles under the speed limit. I've been on the interstate (speed limit 65 mph), 2 lanes, but almost everyone is in 1 lane, and traffic moved at a steady 20-25 mph. (I 81N today, between Frackville and Hazleton). Cars stayed in the tracks of the car in front, and left plenty of room between cars. Driving slow and careful and taking longer is better than driving fast, skidding out, and not getting there.
When I lived in Georgia it rarely snowed. I grew up in Cordele (watermelon capital of the world). I remember only about 2 "snows" in about 15 years, each less than 2 inches. Georgia naturally does not have the snow moving equipment that the northern states do, quite logical, not really needed most of the time. The roads are not designed as well for snow (ex, the I 75N / I 85N merge in Atlanta, with the merge lane in the middle. People on 85 trying to go right for the exit ramps, people on the right trying to go left to avoid the fast lane exits) A lot of people in GA have lived in states that get lots of snow, so GA drivers do know how to drive. Tire stores in GA do sell snow / traction / anti-skid tires. It is just that they don't have enough recent practice with snow driving.
I've heard the joke that in northern states that snowfall of 6 inches or so doesn't make the news and it is business as usual, while southern states will close school with a 1/4 inch of snow on the ground (yes, that happened once in GA). But without the salt, grit, roads with lots of bends, and lack of practice I wouldn't want to drive in snow in GA.
(As a side note, Georgia roads have the definite advantage of not having a many potholes as Pennsylvania has, the pothole capital of the world)
I'm from Atlanta, and once vacationed (in Florida) in a category 2 hurricane.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Given that what 20 years ago wasn't even a notable winter is being treated as the end-of-the-world-winter-storm, one can instead use it w/ a bit of perspective to see how global warming has crept up on us:
http://www.xkcd.com/1321/
William
(who made it into work in south-central PA w/o difficulty in a front-wheel drive Cavalier w/ all-season radial tires, but only saw 4-wheel drives and snow plows and vehicles w/ tire chains on the road)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
In the south-west US, it's unusually warm and dry for this time of year. Looking at just one area on Earth makes for poor evidence.
Table-ized A.I.
Winter tires make a huge difference on ice.
It's the same look I get when I complain to my store managers in Florida about it being oppressively hot in Boston when it's 'only' 96 degrees in August
Yeah, but is it a dry or humid heat? Where I like 96 degrees is hot, but it wouldn't be unbearably hot (except to seniors I suppose), but we don't deal with the humidity like the east and southeast gets.
Yes it is, just like almost anything else you'll hear on Art Bell's comedy show.
In the part of Raleigh, NC where I live, the majority of people (including me) are from up north. I'm from Minnesota. I know a lot of people from Pennsylvania and New York. We all understand snow.
But northern drivers are some of the worst drivers in the South, because they have absolutely no idea what they're getting into and they're cocky as hell. They see a light dusting of snow and say "haha" and go. Well that light dusting of snow melted when it hit the warm road surface, then it kept snowing and cooled down the road, then it froze and kept snowing a bit more. Now you have a light dusting of snow over a solid sheet of ice that you can't see.
Remember these tards say that "its got to get colder to get warmer...." (the Warmists of course who Im talking about)
You realize the reason why the east is going through record low temperatures and precipitation is because the west is going through record dry spells and heat waves, yes?
All those storms that were supposed to hit the west coast got pushed into the Arctic instead, gaining power and losing heat.
You can't just look up and say "weather here is fine." There's a larger picture you have to see.
You missed the point: this was southern Britain, where most cities can keep all the salt/grit they need in a few heaps somewhere. It might snow once or twice, maybe 1-5cm. It hasn't snowed so far this winter.
When it snowed for two weeks, across the whole island, every city, town and village wanted more grit, and there wasn't enough available. Why would the grit-selling company have a 5 year supply on hand?
(Colleagues described the weather today is "bloody freezing". It was 10C. YMMV.)
I'm rather sick and tired of every East Coast issue causing major headline news, while the Midwest gets basically ignored. We've been having the worst winter in memory in Central Illinois, at least 3 major storms and manyl days of uncharacteristic sub-zero arctic weather. Since January. Forgive me if I don't find this story interesting at all. And no offense to you on the East Coast, and not intended to mean things like snow in the South/Southeast.
Speaking as an experienced native Minnesotan...
Stay off that stuff if you can possibly stay home. It's virtually impossible to drive safely on that crap. (Sometimes experience allows you to do a difficult thing better. Sometimes it just tells you when to give up and wait things out.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
... there has been less snow and snow every year. It's big fucking news that we're getting snow that was considered normal winter activity merely 15-20 years ago. You're cute though.
your forefathers who blazed the trails to the west and through the mountains must be spinning like tops in their graves
I've always admired the way our forefathers dealt with this sort of thing - like the Donner party.
I always wondered what was in a Donner Kebab.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Just one warning: when the food supplies collapse due to global warming, we will eat the deniers like you first.
With the last of the fava beans and a nice Chianti
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Won't help. The primary impediment to travel is other cars. If you can get everyone else to buy ice tires, or hell, just teach them to drive on snow, I'd be fine.
Here in Eastern Massachusetts, we do get hit by hurricanes as well.
And there we go. What you neglected to mention is that eastern Massachusetts is a clusterfuck when those infrequent hurricanes come by.
and it still had hurricane force winds when it hit New York
Whoa. "Still had hurricane force winds." That's pretty "large". As to the "largest" hurricane, there are a number of similar sized storms, stretching back to the 50s, when they first could measure these things by that spatial dimension.
Mississippi and Florida were quite prepared for Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana is a special case and New Orleans is special even for that state.
In other news rain showers are expected in April. The south can be idiots when it comes to dealing with snow. Sure you don't get it often but if you don't have salt trucks, plows, snow tires, still insist on driving like the roads are clear than you get what you deserve. I interviewed for a job in Forth Worth a while back and they said if it snows don't come to work its not worth your life. Meanwhile where I'm from we get 30cm snow falls a few times a winter and typically 5cm a few times a week ... and people drive reasonably, leave for work 30 min earlier in the winter etc.
Ok, I'll grant that was a ridiculous understatement. But wind speed does matter. Else you're doing touchie feelie "it looks this big on the satellite image".