Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire We Are a Nation of Weather Wimps?????

I agree. Roughest ride I've ever had and one of the few times I was seriously worried about my families safety. Had the life jackets on all the way in.


Back on the ice deal: The road troops out here sling volcanic cinders on the pavement around the intersections and on the sharpest curves. All scooped up locally and really cheap. The cinders don't expedite rust like the salts and turn to dust and blow away after things melt and dry out. They do chip a lot of windshields though.

Eek, that sounds pretty miserable!

I don't think wouldn't have been an issue if it happened overnight - barely anyone would have ventured out and the kids wouldn't have gone to school. I can't think of a time where we were hit by iced roads in the middle of the day like what happened Tuesday, but maybe some of the older farts that I remember otherwise. Add a million plus cars trying to get home on that fresh ice all at once and it was guaranteed to be an epic cluster.

A blanketing of ice in Georgia is probably about as frequent as 85+ degree days in Anchorage. I've been bass fishing with temps in the high 60s and even low 70s numerous times in Georgia and Alabama in January. The temps will be back in the 60s again this weekend.

Whatever, rookie. Your experience has nothing to do with this. Your input on something you've done professionally dealing with for decades is unacceptable. Those that have witnessed an icy road a few times in their lives and have seen a few inches of snow paralyze travelers, as it's not something they even get most winters? Well hell, THEY know what they're talking about!

Ya ain't lived until you've spent winter on the edge of the north Caspian Sea among the folks that are essentially the first generation becoming mobile.

Though a bit better, when it was bad in Alberta, well, it was bad.

Try Chinatown in a blizzard. The HORROR, dude, the HORROR!

I will discover a few of months of Korea next week. Thankfully winter is winding down. Friggin bicycles everywhere. I have visions of 5 O'Clock Charlie from MASH...

LMAO.. Too true.. It's why I built this house on the highest point in this field that was close to the road.. I NEVER have to worry about floods..

But this winter (here) has been nearly one for the books; with 18 days in January with snowfalls that need to be moved. I haven't seen the roads and ditches so full of snow since '81-'82. And we got Feb/Mar left which are normally those with the heavier snowfalls. Even with a pretty serious blower on the tractor - I'm not sure just where it's all going to go..

Steve_NO is also experienced in driving up Nort' as his progeny went to the halls of higher learning up in this neck of the woods. I believe I can actually hear his evil laugh as he drives by other Lousyanna folks stuck in a ditch.

you made one statement, that is the crux of all the problems being experienced on the roads in Georgia etc...

you said when the roads are covered with ice... you will stay at home...

that is simple common sense...but sadly common sense, isn't so common....

people should stay at home, but they don't...

they still get out there and don't go slow enough for the conditions...plus they don't have the tires or chains to go thru that ice covering the roads...

they can't figure out, putting on the brakes and heading toward a stop sign at the bottom of the hill, they aren't going to be able to stop on ice, going downhill...so if they have to be out.. they should avoid routes that they encounter that sort of problem...

but you hit the nail on the head... stay at home!!!!

99% of the southern drivers did just fine in the ice and snow we had earlier in the week. We had the same conditions in more rural areas away from Atlanta. The problems came when 1-2 vehicles, usually truckers, got sideways in the road and blocked everyone else. Because there were far fewer vehicles on the road here, and alternate routes were available when a blockage happened, we were able to keep most traffic moving and tow trucks could get to the stuck vehicles. In Atlanta once things stopped moving everyone was trapped. There was no way to get help to the handful of vehicles who couldn't move.

I blame local weather forecasters for 2 reasons. First of all the prediction was for a light dusting of snow starting at 4 PM. Schools and businesses made decisions based on that forecast. Local schools cancelled all after school practices, games and other activities and called off school at 1PM as a precaution. Many businesses planned on closing around noon as well. That decision was made the night before. Snow started at 10 AM here and was certainly more than a dusting. Kids were supposed to have been home hours before this started. Instead, it put all of the traffic on the roads just at the worst times.

The 2nd problem is that local weather forecasters like to use the "S" word in their forecast. It gets ratings up when mentioned. This is the 4th or 5th time snow has been mentioned in the forecast as a possibility since November. Tuesday is the first snowflake I've seen here this year. People get to a point where they don't really believe it until they see it falling.

Several years back my Crew and I were working in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the weather guessers were predicting ice. In fact it was moving up I-30 from Texarkana, and you could track the progress. This was on a Thursday and we would leave the Motel and go home the next day, so I called our office and asked them about checking out of the motel early enough so that we did not have to pay Thursday night, and just go home when the ice started. Their position was that higher up had said nothing about leaving early, so stay until you hear from us. When the ice hit Benton, just a few miles down the road, I sent the crew home, on that had to drive all the way to Ft. Smith, while I stayed for a while thinking that I would hear from the office. Never did. It started icing so I tried to head home and was in the awfullest mess that I ever saw. I was in a 4WD truck and could go anywhere I wanted, except for abandoned cars. I was in west Little Rock, which is hilly and people would spin a little, then get out, lock their car up and walk off. I did make it out of Little Rock, but I drove on sidewalks, up one way streets the wrong way for a little while, on the shoulders of I-30, in the median, just anywhere to get around the cars. They were doing the same thing on the interstates and people walking everywhere. There were people walking across the Arkansas River bridge in I-540 and there is nothing for a long ways after you cross the bridge. I don't know what people were thinking but it was the craziest thing I eve saw. miles

Nope...you need to see a doc and get that bug removed..it is twisting your logic. Seems the blame for that falls with the schools and the parents for sending them when they knew the weather was going to be too much for them to handle. It is called accepting responsibility for your own actions.

Always pisses me off when the "authorities" blame a storm for people dying...the storm is a factor but peoples choices and actions are the reason they die in a storm.

As a kid in Big Spring, Texas when we had an ice/ sleet blizzard, we would grab a big shovel to sit on the street at the top of the hill and slide down the road about a quarter mile.

In all honesty I don't think wyoming really gets the ice storms that wetter parts of the country do. Wydot calls a sheet of white ice ( that is usually just snow that melted and then froze again) black ice. I've never seen ice in wyoming that compared with a true ice storm I once saw in western Oregon.

It sounds a little stupid to be talking about different kinds of ice, but a true ice storm will make walking a real challenge.

I saw a teacher in Atlanta being interviewed about staying overnight at the school with the stranded students. She said the kids loved it, thought it was just a big sleep over. Meanwhile moms and dads are in a panic over trying to get to the school.

When people left in the morning it was sunny and cool but nothing out of the ordinary. As JMR40 said, they've called for snow 4-5 times this winter and we've not had a single snowflake. The prediction was for at worst a light dusting with a 30% chance of snow showers after 4 pm. The point the national media likes to ignore is that "forecast" for significant weather was changed after people were already at work and school merely expecting a dusting, and even then the models and various weather reporting systems / channels did not agree.

So once again - expectations = "dusting" reality - more than 3" in many areas that turned promptly to ice.

Contrary to what some of you want to believe there was no forecast of an imminent significant weather event to occur during business / school hours until well after it was too late. I'm not blaming anyone in this case, but the weather forecast missed the boat badly and traffic cluster the worst I've ever seen was the result.

Glad to hear you came out OK David. I was wondering how you guys made out.

There is a little bit of condescension creeping in. I know, I know, I've driven in blizzards and snowstorms and seen some really nasty conditions too. I have the requisite (for a mountain boy like me) 4 wheel drive with real live snow tires and, yes, I have been in one my whole life and know just what they can and cannot do.

But in the end this comes down to one thing and one thing only: Money.

In spite of what some here believe you can get ahead of most real live ice storms and keep the roads drivable. Or at the least get them cleaned up fairly quickly. I've seen it done. And what happened there was not a real live ice storm anyway, it was a wet, heavy snow that got packed down into ice. And yes, a proper treatment of the roads before and during the storm would have prevented this mess.

But it costs a lot of money. And takes coordination. And practice. The Atlanta area chose not to invest in storm readiness. And they'll most likely continue to do so. A storm like this don't happen that often.

But these southern lads are completely right in one respect: Once that stuff gets packed into ice you are done. Unless you have chains or straps and a pretty nimble touch on the wheel you are done. And that ain't gonna help you a damned bit on an interstate that is packed concrete barrier to ditchline with a million cars that don't have the proper equipment.

A man can look down his nose at them if you want, but even if you had all the great equipment in the world you'd have likely been sitting in traffic cussing up a storm just like those poor boys down there were doing.

Will

Good point about the cruise control.

The thing that I see coming out of this is that in the future the weather-guessers will be even more inclined to throw out warnings - ones that cover even wider areas and longer time-frames than they do now. Providing warnings instead of information will allow them to say, "I told you so" without really telling us anything of useful value.

Kamo Gari - my man, you are cool! Hope it came across. Best to you.

The back and forth "chat" is interesting. By and large, isn't it true that we measure most human performance by how well folks prepare and plan beforehand, how they behave under pressure (particularly new challenges), and how they then reflect on their own responsibilities and deal with the aftermath?

If it's not new ice, it will be something else - eh?

Damnit John, that's a negative attitude. I agree 100% but it still a pretty poor attitude toward our fellow man.

Will