New Scaratings

4 million people took to the streets in a span of 20 minutes.

I had employees literally run to their cars with abject terror on their faces before any accumulation happened on pavement.

Turns out they were right in a way... some of our folks never got home, one had a 13 hour trip.

Took me three hours and I live 10 minutes from work. ( I waited 4 hours working)

I became used to the sight of people abandoning their cars on Interstates / major roads in the traffic lanes when accumulation was about an inch.

I had heard tales but thought they were exaggerated.

You would have thought Sherman was marching through GA the way they were abandoning their cars from what I saw on TV.

You had to see it to believe it.

On the other hand, gas stations closed and motorists ran out of gas in many cases after sitting for hours.

Seems to me everybody shoulders some blame here. The city did not do a good job on the roads and then releasing everybody at the same time made matters worse. But the general public deserves some blame as well, they also knew what was coming but just figured everything would work like a normal day, figured somebody else would look after them.

If you know snow and ice are coming you just don't go out, you keep the kids home from school and you work from home. And yeah, I know that's not an option for some people.

Dallas is the same way when snow and ice hits, total paralysis. But many people don't go out, they know the area can't take care of the roads very well. A couple of months ago the day before a bad storm hit, I made sure I had enough groceries for nearly a week and just assumed I wouldn't be going out for many days. The storm iced everything over for several days as I hibernated.

Scar, I'm assuming the media outlets didn't say just stay home the night before. That's what they do here. It does seem as though a lot of teachers deserve a raise for taking proper care of stuck kids. And the media making a fuss over adults sleeping in a grocery store or similar is silly, they were under a roof, warm, had food and drink, and were perfectly safe. Probably half the planet would kill for accommodations that nice.

An event of this magnitude will help make sure that everybody from the mayor to the public does a much better job in this scenario next time.

Our company prints some of our material in Atlanta. I needed it yesterday, finally got it this afternoon.

I have a friend in Atlanta, he was one of the many that pulled his car over and started working. Shortly after he did that, he fell down and tore up his shoulder (an MRI later revealed). He called 911 and got a busy signal. When he finally got through, they told him they couldn't send an ambulance. He ended up walking to the closest hospital.

Well, I was texting with an employee who couldn't find a room from her phone, couldn't find gas, it was 12 degrees at midnight and she was alone and scared halfway home navigating abandoned cars and jack knifed trucks on I-75! and hadn't been out of her car in 11 hours to go to the bathroom. She is a very level headed person who left at about the first snowflakes as she had a ways to go. I wanted to go help her but I knew I was powerless to cross the city.

There were a lot of frightened people out there; I'm amazed there weren't more tragedies.

It really didn't have to be that way, but it was.

Paralysis pretty well summed it up.

Yeah, I know it's easy to have an opinion as one who wasn't there, that's kinda why I brought it up so someone who was there can reply.

Let me ask you this about her and her terrible situation. She knew bad weather was going to hit and had to travel a ways, did she have the option of working from home or simply staying at home?

For what it's worth, while I have my opinion on this situation, it could certainly be swayed by those who have more facts and info than I.

No, she has a hands on job and can't work from home.

She could have stayed home.

And this is exactly why Atlanta shouldn't have a hockey team...
When the next ice age starts, you may want to pack a light lunch down there, Scott.

What a delicious irony.

Sunday morning opened the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Front Page main article was about how terrible the state and local governments responded to "a relatively minor weather event". And a blurb about 'No the Metro section isn't missing we just made it all about the snow".

I laughed and laughed reading them lambast everybody in charge of anything (some with very good reason, mind you).

My good humor derived from this was the first newspaper I had received since Tuesday, the day of the storm, and they were incompetent in resuming local delivery.

The snow was basically gone by Thursday afternoon.

No paper Friday or Saturday (they did send us an email with a link to a digital version) when the highs were 56 and 57 degrees respectively ?

On the other hand, I'm betting,say, Wisconsin's fire ant control plans are horseshit.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

No plans that I'm aware of. It appears that they don't survive harsh winters.