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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.
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....
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
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
Average -20C day in Canada
Yes. But it is a "dry cold."
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
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.
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.
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.
I'd like to see your citation for burying power lines to be a "one time 3k fee". Especially in cities and similar built-up areas that are the most affected. You'd also need to bury the transformers and all of the other gear currently on poles and any other points of failure. And then when you do need to do maintenance on those buried lines, the cost of unburying and reburying them is still significant. The much more economical option is to simply get your own backup source of power, be it a generator, wind or solar - whichever suits your anticipated situation best.
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
Just one warning: when the food supplies collapse due to global warming, we will eat the deniers like you first.
Dear Mother Nature,
You win at winter. Now please give us spring and win that one even better.
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.
Knock it off
Silver Spring, here. Shovel now, like you suggest, and you'll have ice directly on the sidewalk and the car. Have fun with that! I'm waiting until it's over so the ice is on top of the snow where it's easy to remove.
No sig? Sigh...
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
I don't know if it means anything, but in my city, even the insurance forms have Godzilla clauses.
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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").
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.
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.)
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.
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.