Give 'em a break

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.