Give 'em a break

[mondhasen]

It's all well and good to think it funny that a couple of inches of snow can be so devastating to a city like Atlanta, but one might want to consider the physics and events involved. Compressing snow on freezing pavement gives you ice. Cars stuck on icy pavement block snow/ice treating vehicles. Everyone exiting work and school simultaneously onto icy pavement... well, you get the picture. Yes, add too this the inexperience of piloting one's vehicle in unfamiliar conditions. Disaster.

In our infamous Blizzard of '78 the same deal happened in Rhode Island, only in lots deeper snow: everyone let out of work and school at the same time and the roads became clogged and impassable to the clean-up crews. Of course, cars were buried in snow during this, not just idling on ice. The traffic was blocked-up for days for tens and tens of miles.

I always tell the family to watch the intersections because that is where the ice forms from slipping or stopped, idling cars. Also, I try to remember the warning "Bridges Freeze First" due to their being suspended in frigid air.

I would have had insufferable anxiety were I stuck in that mess.

Comments

[schnee.livejournal.com]

1978 was a good year for blizzards, it seems.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

So it was! We also had a big one in 1968: my dad drove up from New Jersey with a small trailer on his car in that one. Made it into the driveway bottom and had to quit.

[moxie_man]

My mother told me about the '68 one. The folks also talked about one in the mid-60's where school was cancelled for most of a week as it took that long to not only clear the roads, but to tunnel down into the school entrances.

Oh, and I blinked at your reference of "tens and tens of miles" until I remembered that my county is the size of your state. :)

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

Providence is maybe 15 miles from here. The state is apparently 48 miles long :D