The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Better weather in Georgia, but worse response

Pity the South. They really can't deal with winter weather:

In Atlanta, however, at 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning (well after the snowfall had stopped), [Mayor Kasim] Reed was talking about people still needing to get home.

Many of these people wound up passing the night at a grocery store or a stranger's home because the alternative was spending it on the highway, stuck in traffic that was barely moving, if at all. And people who didn't leave work soon enough – or schools that may not have sent children home early enough – quickly got stuck where they were. In Atlanta, schools didn't dismiss classes until after the snow started falling.

In the Northeast and Midwest, we regularly drive through this window: the first few hours of flurries. The great advantage of having snow plows (and salt trucks) is not just that they help clean up once a storm has passed, but also that they give us time to head home once it's already begun. If you don't have plenty of this equipment poised to hit streets before the first snowfall, chaos can set in immediately. That means that a region that isn't prepared ahead of time doesn't get much of a grace period to make up for that mistake.

Meanwhile, up here in Siberia, the next few weeks will be grim:

Chicagoans shiver[ed] through a 16th morning of sub-zero [Fahrenheit] temperatures Wednesday. But a measure of relief is on the way—albeit limited in scope and of shorter duration than many would prefer in the midst of a tough winter ranked 10th coldest and 5th snowiest to date.

While peak daytime temperatures are to surge 9°C Wednesday to a high of -7°C—and another 6°C to -3°C Thursday, snow chances are to increase in coming days as well.

A spell of snow is possible Thursday afternoon and evening with a more significant snowy period due Friday night into Saturday.

So what now? Only another 100-150 mm of snow. And then it will cool off again.

At this writing I'm 6 days and 19 hours from skipping town, though. I can cope for a few more days.

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