January 30, 2014

The Difference Between Snowflakes and Zombies


Real life vs Walking Dead


In Atlanta anyway.


Gizmodo has a surprisingly good piece by a transplanted Northerner that explains the situation to his sneering former neighbors.


 Birmingham is one of those cities that shuts down at the faintest hint of snow. Again, this isn’t because we are rubes who wonder why God’s tears have turned white and fall slower. It’s because the city does not have the infrastructure in place to handle snow, and is self-aware enough to realize it. If you don’t know how to swim, just stay out of the pool. Easy.

This time, though, the city did not shut down. Schools were open. Places of business kept businessing. That’s because as of Tuesday morning, we were being told that all that was coming was a light dusting


Read the whole thing.

I'm not sure there wasn't a major screw up in Atlanta, but the southeast got, in addition to the snow, a good deal of ice in some places, and that, combined with the storm shifting at the last moment really caused problems.

One exchange in the comments stands out though, in response to those who helpfully stressing the importance of driving slow came THIS profound insight.....



Ummm...that's your scenario too.

Listen. If you know how to drive in snow well enough that you don't need to slow down....YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE IN SNOW.  "Mr. Snow Is Scary" is the one doing it right.

Now I realize that for some of our readers, if you don't have to break out the aerosani, then it ain't really snow, but no matter how great the snowfall, one of the most important safety tips is to know your limitations. Driving slow is a rational, sensible response.

Here locally, we have 8 inches on the ground in Portsmouth, which is more than we've gotten in over a decade. (The other side of the Roads often gets more, but here on the Southside any accumulation is rare) The area is still shut down and schools are expected to remain closed tomorrow.



It will be 65 this weekend.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:30 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 354 words, total size 3 kb.

1 You seem to be quite the nexus of bad luck lately.  How many more winter storms are you going to pull over my house on its way to you this season? 

Posted by: Siergen at Thu Jan 30 19:53:52 2014 (c2+vA)

2 Lately?

Posted by: Wonderduck at Fri Jan 31 00:20:37 2014 (OcKnz)

3 Oh, look, you've gotten all of our snow.  I'm in central Pennsylvania, and there's less than an inch on the ground.  This is the first day in weeks that it's been anything other than frigid, but the snow has all gone elsewhere.  We're in that dry zone, too far southeast for lake-effect, too far west for heavy nor'easters or Atlantic-derived snow in general.

Posted by: Mitch H. at Fri Jan 31 11:02:26 2014 (jwKxK)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
31kb generated in CPU 0.0215, elapsed 0.1311 seconds.
69 queries taking 0.1196 seconds, 366 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.