SouthEast-MidAtlantic Snow/Ice storm January 28-29, 2014 (hot, records, quake, annual)
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It IS a joke. People got stuck on the road for 17 hours because of 2 inches of snow? Gotta be the first time. Last time it happened in Chicago, and it was 2 feet of snow.
We had a similar ice storm a few weeks ago too, and it impacted the entire city of 2.8M, and 10,000 people were out of power because of it. But we handled it. Nobody got stuck in their cars for hours and no kids were unable to get back home.
What happens in Atlanta is simply stupid. People simply can't drive on snowy/icy roads? Well, better give back their driver's license.
I am sick of "but people there are not used to this kind of condition" argument. We are human beings, and we adapt to the nature - it is not some gigantic earthquake or hurricane. It is just 2 inches of freaking snow and everyone just freaked out. totally pathetic.
It's not that the people can't handle it. Southerners do just fine in cold weather conditions, believe it or not. You know what you have in Chicago that we don't in the south? Road equipment to deal with it. Let's see how you special Chicagoans handle it when we take away the city's army of snow plows and salt trucks. Officials in Atlanta should have handled it better, but you're comparing apples to oranges here.
When Sandy made landfall in New Jersey it wasn't disastrous because of the strength of the storm (a cat 1 is no biggie to regions that deal with them often), it was disastrous because they weren't equipped to deal with it. Make sense?
You know what you have in Chicago that we don't in the south? Road equipment to deal with it. Let's see how you special Chicagoans handle it when we take away the city's army of snow plows and salt trucks.
I agree. Cousin of mine works for DOT up here and he told me there's no equipment and no need for it down there. States are cash strapped so there is no point in ordering a fleet of plows or a ton of salt that would just sit there. He said even Virginia plows had dust on them when they brought them out yesterday.
The other factor people need to remember... ICE!! No matter where you live, if you don't have chains or studded tires or snow tires you will not go anywhere on the road with ice. Temps in the teens and 20s any melting from vehicle heat was freezing up on the roads and even salt is not effective at those temps.. People cannot ignore that. It's not only rare to get snow in the south but to have temps in the teens and 20s is just impressive and can't be forgotten.
Why people left the door is another story. Why the city didn't call in help from other states before hand is beyond me.
Is Alabama and South Carolina facing the same problems as Georgia?
I haven't heard about South Carolina, but I know that Alabama is dealing with the same problems.
Somebody from Birmingham posted on a weather forum this morning that he was disappointed in the lack of national news coverage on the situation in Birmingham, especially compared to Atlanta. I told him that it's a blessing in disguise because everybody's busy laughing at the incompetence of Georgia and Atlanta while ignoring the equal incompetence of Alabama and Birmingham.
This is the actual weather balloon launch over Peachtree City, Georgia at 7pmEST January 28, 2014.
In simple terms this is like you are standing outside looking straight up into the sky. This is showing the vertical profile of the atmosphere at that time.
So start at the bottom and look up the graph. The right black line is the temp. The left is the dewpoint. Where they meet = moisture.
Long story short, it's impressive to see for down south. All layers of the atmosphere were below freezing and the column was full of moisture.. So snow was falling from 10,000 feet and not melting in any layer all the way down to the surface ...and Cold!
Some parts of the Northeast and Midwest have a greater chance of reaching 100 degrees in the summer than parts of the South though. But it goes both ways, when we see hurricanes/heat/etc. people from the south are the first ones to comment about how they get it worse, even though that isn't always the case.
"You call that a hurricane? We call that everyday here in Florida!" (Then how is it still on the map? )
"That's what New Yorkers call a blizzard?" That's just a normal Tuesday in Canada!" (Please. )
Umm I live in Texas and we can have months of 100+ degrees, no place in the Northeast/Midwest can see that kind of sustained heat.
100 degrees in Chicago is a heatwave and makes news. 100 degrees in Austin is a standard summer day.
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