Yesterday turned into a much different story than what I experienced in 2011. While, I grew up with schools staying open unless the snow was falling faster than an inch an hour, I have come to realize that Atlanta doesn't mess around with this stuff and they will cancel school over the prediction of the kind of snow that we don't even brush off our cars for back home. That's why Tuesday got so bad. The weather reporters were warning us of potential for snow to the south of Atlanta so schools in our area weren't closing and at most we were to expect a light dusting in our city, starting later in the afternoon. Since they weren't freaking out, I wasn't freaking out and neither was anyone else. Heath stopped on the way into work to fill his gas tank and I just bundled up since I knew the temps were going to drop by the time my shift was over but I didn't take any extra precautions.
By 9am the snow started to fall and by 10am it looked like this outside
Picture taken from our clinic in direction of hospital where Heath works
The fact that snow was starting to stick to the concrete was creating cause for concern, patients were beginning to cancel appointments and our bosses were starting to plan for early closure of the clinic at 4:30. Within the next hour it became clear that the snow was falling harder than the reporters had predicted and the Winter Storm Warning was now being upgraded. My collegue found out that her kid's school was closing early and she had to be there within 2 hours to pick-up her daugher. It was then determined that the clinic would close by noon so the workers could all get home before the weather turned really bad. Three of us left the clinic together and were met immediately with the roads already crowded with too many cars and SUVs having difficulty getting up small hills. We helped push a couple cars out of duress on the walk to our own cars and then got in line with the rest of traffic.
It is 1pm at this time
It didn't take long to realize that things were not looking good, not necessarily because the roads were already so bad but because the roads were so crowded with every parent that was trying to get to their kids (all schools closed early) and every worker that had been sent home early because their businesses also let them head home before the storm got worse. This headache created situations where people began to feel frantic, unwilling to allow others to merge in line and frightful to put their own cars in park to go help the car up ahead that was struggling to get up a hill who was blocking everyone else from going anywhere.
Snow continued to fall and tire friction kept the snow melting on the roads but as the temp continued to drop this began to create even icier conditions. After taking an hour to drive the first one half mile of my 11 mile (hilly) trip home and then sitting still for 30 minutes, I decided I needed to get out of traffic. Once the line moved the 15 feet I needed to get into a parking lot, I pulled in, parked, bundled up and walked back to the hospital where Heath works. It took me 9 minutes to walk the distance it just took me to drive 1.5 hours. I spent the rest of the afternoon in Heath's break room, staying warm and glued to the tv while I watched the entire greater Atlanta stuck in the same situation I was just in, only way worse now.
The big difference being that these people were too far gone from their jobs by now, they had long commutes and/or were too far stuck in gridlocked traffic (many stopped on the freeways) to just leave their cars where they were at that point. However, the weather was only turning colder, the sun was beginning to set, cars still weren't moving and things weren't improving. So people started running out of gas, becoming hungry and very cold. The good samaritans began to come out in droves, everyone making huge efforts to help everyone that needed it. Buses were trying to get kids home but they were getting stuck and/or doing their best just to get the kids back to the schools. Our friends and co-workers took 5-8 hours just to go 5-10 miles to their homes but eventually all made it safely.
Heath and I chose to spend the night at a friend's house that only lived 2 miles from work. There was no way we would have made it to our home as all of the major roads to our neighborhood were entirely shut down. So many people were forced to abandon their cars. The next day this is how some of those roads continued to look despite many efforts already completed to remove those abandoned vehicles.
These are typically 2 lane roads with no shoulders for parking on
While many of you back home will joke about how the southerns don't know how to drive in the snow and are so ill prepared for this type of weather (and that is true because it rarely happens here), but this was truely a condition of terrible timing and overloaded roads with too many people going the same direction. The Governor declared a State of Emergency for all of Georgia mid-way through the day yesterday because it was a very serious, dangerous and dire situation for so many ill-prepared people. We were ALL caught off guard and we were all trapped on the roads. Things continue to remain icy as the temperatures did not get above freezing today. Late tomorrow it is supposed to rise into the 40s and by Saturday we are expected to be back into the 60s. So we will recover and businesses will go back to normal functioning but for many Tuesday, Jan 28, 2014 will be a day that they are grateful to have survived unharmed. This was a very scary situation for a defenseless place.
