Started flaking around 10AM Tuesday. Coworkers started leaving. I chuckled and soldiered on.

Schools closed around noon. I chuckled and soldiered on...

1PM word got back that the roads were clogged. I stopped laughing and joined the fray.

5 hours later I'd gotten 6 miles (had 23 in total to get home.)



Yes, that clown is wearing snow shoes.

Another hour, another mile...



It was about 19 degrees now. The bit of snow had frozen to an ice rink. People were stopped, too afraid to continue...

2 hours later 9PM, another mile. Quick Trip looked welcoming...



Texting a couple coworkers all heading to the Marietta area from Alpharetta, we all wound up at QT. All roads were stopped. No hotels in the area; even if there were, every hotel in Metro Atlanta was sold out. Home Depot and Publix were putting people up for the night.

They wanted to walk 2 miles to the nearest publix. It was about 15 degrees and windy. Convinced them to leave their cars (one had become stuck anyway) and we Fitted on.

A slight hill had everyone stopped. I slalomed the Fit around them and down the hill. It looked like a blue run at Snowbird. The Fit did ok with summer tires on solid ice.

11PM, we made it almost to Publix when we saw a Taco Mac that had blazing lights. We were saved.



Bar (curses!) and kitchen were closed, but they were serving chicken fingers and coffee to about 30 people holed up in there.

Slept in a booth. Wednesday morning the big screens showed exactly how bad things were. Shrugged, took us back to QT to pick up the cars. Got them going and went back to Taco Mac. That drive scared the crap out of them. Cars were doing a ballet up and down that hill. Spinning around with style! Fit tracked up and down without any drama.

10AM abandoned co-workers at Taco Mac and took off. Streets were empty except for abandoned cars. Looked like winter scene in The Walking Dead. Made the remaining 10 miles in less than an hour. Fit did ok.

(I did call them to let them know it was passable. The biggest problem the day before was gridlock. It was only 2 inches of snow. Amazing how solid it froze without the benefit of salt or sand. They made it a few hours later).

 

God yes, always a nightmare in towns that aren't equipped with snow removal equipment. This happened to me once in Las Vegas but not nearly as dramatic because it wasn't as cold.

Glad the Fit was a trooper and you finally made it home. I was mad it took me three hours to get home yesterday because of an accident on the bridge, this puts things in perspective

 

There was triple those amounts of snow and ice on my roads tonight.

It took me 17 minutes to go 17 miles.

Cliffs: Union > Confederacy

 

I saw this in the news. I'm glad you guys are alright, but I can't understand why such a tiny amount of snow would have such a dramatic impact.

Did it all melt and refreeze right away? Guess no one has winter tires down there...

Still... Seems hard to believe it would be THAT backed up.

Don't mean to be offensive, but to this Canadian, this all seems rather silly lol.

 

Its from people not used to the weather.

Here in Texas last week they shut down Fort Hood because of less then ONE inch of ice/snow.

Then it snowed another few inches at most across a 12 hour period.

I was having an absolute blast on the deserted highways. Drove around on backroads as well, great fun. Made me feel like I was home again fora few hours!!

 

my bro-in-law, who is canadian, laughs at us in the NE for cancelling work/school for 1 foot of snow. and we laugh at people from the south for getting 1 inch.

 

the heavy snow fall this season in USA breaks past records of chill .. getting the taste through the images

 

I haven't had to shovel my driveway since 1990. And then it was because I lived in Colorado. Confederacy > Union!

 

I've lived in Canada (Stratford Ont), WA, UT, CO and I think it's rather silly too.

People were frozen along with the roads. Any hill and traffic was stopped. Atlanta is kinda hilly. Every flat road was gridlocked.

It had been below freezing for several days. What snow that fell melted and turned to ice almost immediately. The road surfaces looked like a curling rink. The heat from the cars wasn't enough to melt it. But that's what happens when you don't have salt/sand trucks.

 

yep, so much for all the money spent (wasted) on forecasting the weather.

 

Go ahead and laugh. And we'll laugh at you when you have to shut down due to a "heat wave" in the 90's. We had a 70 days at 95+ this last summer. Nobody shut anything down.
Heat wins: Minneapolis cancels schools without AC | Star Tribune


So people who live in the north are better at handling winter. People living in the south are better at summer. That's normal and expected.

 

Well the weather forecasts were accurate. National weather service issued a winter storm warning 2-3 inches for metro Atlanta the evening before.

I don't think anyone anticipated that this would transform magically to a sheet of ice due to the many days of cold temperatures leaving the ground freezing. Instead of slush it melted and refroze to a nice sheen...

 

Yeah, the heat never shuts anything down in hot box Phoenix, altho in 1992, it reached 122 at Sky Harbor Airport. They wouldn't let the planes fly cuz they thought planes couldn't get enough lift.

God forbid it would ever snow here. That WOULD shut us down..... Go north about 2 1/2 hours to Flagstaff, and snow, ice and all that are the norm in winter. Big trucks always sliding off I-40 and "black ice", which you guys know about. argh

 

I've never seen anything shut down for hot temps in my 20-some years in WI.

 

lol, its funny reading all these comments and remembering back to when i lived in illinois...i remember one winter the road leading back to my house i had to stop at an intersection to get to the road....long story short i was doing like 20-25mph and it took me from about a quarter of a mile back from the intersection to actually stop...luckily there was no one in front of me, but yes the road had frozen over that badly

 

the learning point is a little bit of sand and salt give a tremendous improvement in traction over black ice with a dusting of snow on top...

And GA doesn't have enough sand/salt truck-plows for such an event, nor will we since this happens 1 day every 3 years on average.

 

I got stuck at the office here in Birmingham and couldn't get home because all the roads were blocked with sideways abandoned cars. I had a great time tossing the Fit around the snowy/icy roads around the office though! Stability/traction control in combination with my new Kumho PA31 all season tires worked great. I was getting around better than everything except for 4x4 trucks and all wheel drive Suburus. I even got a little slow speed handbrake drift action going.

-Dustin

 

I was in this frigging mess too. I left work early -- as soon as I heard it was declared a state of emergency. I work downtown, so I managed to get off the highway before gridlock. Traffic on surface streets went to hell. I sat in traffic, stopped, for two hours.

F it, I started going through neighborhoods...



Things got too bad, and I ran out of neighborhoods to cut through. I parked in a lot out in front of a business.



Good thing I did, everything was completely f'd. I started jogging. Every hill looked like this:



There's cars stuck on both sides and a truck sideways... It was a disaster.

I jogged 5 miles home, I couldn't stop or my feet would have gotten frostbite.

Here's what the road in front of my house looked like:




I biked back two days later, and got the Fit once everything cleared.