Snow problem

Michael Boylan's picture

Is everybody O.K.? Did you have enough bread and milk to last you the night on Saturday?

Whew, that was some batch of flurries.

Look, I understand that the south does not have the resources to deal with major snowfall. We don’t have sand trucks, snow plows, large amounts of rock salt for icy patches of roads and sidewalks, but we need to have a bit of a bigger backbone. The snow on Saturday was not a big deal.

What the heck was going on with the cancellations from this weekend? I came into the office today and heard that the MLK parade was cancelled - for snow flurries? Snowflakes that melted the instant they touched the ground? The Fayette County Chamber of Commerce canceled their banquet? Was it even flurrying all that heavy by Saturday evening? Nothing accumulated on the streets and I’m unaware that there was any patches of ice on the roads. I can only assume that things were canceled because everyone thought no one would brave going out in the elements.

I’m all for safety, but this was not a blizzard or even an ice storm, it was snow flurries. Big, beautiful flakes that coated the trees and glazed rooftops. It was great, but it was just fluffy rain.

And then all these churches close on Sunday? For what? Driving in puddles?

All I ask is that people take a deep breath at the next snowfall, see if anything is going to accumulate and seriously affect travel and roll with the punches.

If this had happened on Friday instead of Saturday, the schools would have closed.

That’s just crazy.

We get thunderstorms that are more dangerous to drive in and yet they don't stop our daily lives.

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I keep hearing.....
Cyclist's picture
Submitted by Cyclist on Mon, 01/21/2008 - 7:00pm.

that we are overdue for a nasty ice storm. When I came out here in '87, I was told the ice storm of 1982 was a whooper. I somewhat remember that as I was living in LA with 80 Degree weather at the time.
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Yankees and the complaining..
Submitted by McDonoughDawg on Mon, 01/21/2008 - 1:23pm.

Every now and then, there is an extreme heat wave up North. Yankees die, and do Southerners complain? We could make fun of them for not getting in the AC, or at least in front of a fan, but NO, we let it go.

I could state the obvious, but you know they are ready. Smiling

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Weather Problems
Submitted by Daniel Ross on Mon, 01/21/2008 - 11:10am.

Michael,
After the snow had stopped falling around 5 Saturday evening, a lot of forecasters believed that the melted snow on the roads would freeze with the low pressure front that brought us the temperatures in the teens.

What a lot of the meteorologists missed on the forecasting models was that this low had strong winds accompanying it, causing the roads to dry up before the temps dropped.

Many churches did not want to risk having early morning services in case the roads and sidewalks did ice over (like many meteorologists had predicted) so that people wouldn't fall and hurt themselves.

As for your comment about thunderstorms, it is safer to be in your car during a thunderstorm than to be anywhere else.

Georgia shuts down during a "snow storm" (this was a snow storm in Georgia-sense) because of our inadequate snow defense (rock salt, sand trucks, etc).

If it had iced over, things might be different and forecasters would feel vindicated (but we all know how often they're right).

But, hindsight being 20/20, comments like yours are flying around the metro area since we dodged the ice bullet.
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