Dispatch from snowmageddon
Well, we’re hunkered down and bracing for the possible 9 inches of global warming we may get. 9 inches being an amount of snow that likely exceeds snowfall for the last 10 years. We have plenty of milk, bread and toilet paper. Oh, and whisky. It’s important.
Stay safe out there.
February 12th, 2014 at 1:42 pm
9?
Insist on 45!
February 12th, 2014 at 1:42 pm
I’m in Chicago and we’re calloused (Cubs fan too). You and your little ones stay safe, Uncle.
February 12th, 2014 at 1:52 pm
ZOMG GLOBAL WARMENING…
February 12th, 2014 at 2:03 pm
I thought you guys had it downpat up there in the foothills?
February 12th, 2014 at 2:12 pm
So, I’m from the U.P. of Michigan and I can’t quite fathom how the hell 9″ of snow messes your world up.
We got pounded with up to 20″ in some places last month, and had a 2 hour school delay. We get a couple inches almost daily (drifting, whatever… I’m always shoveling my damn driveway).
But when the South gets 2″ of snow and every mud-loving 4×4 driving Redneck winds up doing 14 barrel rolls over a bus full of schoolkids driven by nuns. References to Revelations are made and questions are raised if it’s the Apocalypse?
This is why I stay within 25 miles of where I am right now. I don’t quite understand the rest of the country.
February 12th, 2014 at 2:15 pm
9″ messes us up? Try 2″? And we don’t do barrel rolls. We stay home.
Tam, Murvel maybe as well be Knoxville when it comes to snow.
February 12th, 2014 at 2:17 pm
I’m running low on Jack. I need an air drop. Single Barrel pls
February 12th, 2014 at 2:18 pm
Do you have plenty of eggs? Can’t do a snow storm without eggs to go along with the milk and bread! Why? French Toast! The official food of snow storms everywhere!
February 12th, 2014 at 2:20 pm
Josh,
The problem is 2-fold. One – insanity. Two – preparation.
Let’s deal with 2 first. Something like 14 trucks are on standby to salt (with brine?) the roads around Knoxville. 14. Chicago probably twice that number of trucks at Midway Airport (the small airport).
And to be fair ice and hills don’t really go together very well. And these places are more likely to get freezing rain than actual snow.
Add to that the fact they haven’t seen snow in a while, and well, that leads us to the first point.
Insanity strikes the south whenever they see white flakes on the ground. They stomp on the breaks. Try to accelerate madly – as if those spinning tires are suddenly going to grab hold like they do at the drag strip. They don’t think about going slow. They race up to the stop sign and are shocked – SHOCKED! – to discover that they can’t stop.
Forget 2 inches. I have seen southern cities immobilized by one-quarter inch of the white stuff.
February 12th, 2014 at 2:27 pm
“So, I’m from the U.P. of Michigan and I can’t quite fathom how the hell 9″ of snow messes your world up.”
For starters, imagine a world with no snowplows or salt trucks. That thing you clear your driveway with? The sn-ow sh… ovel? you called it? Take that away, too.
Snow tires? Nope, you don’t get those, either. Also, your temperatures have to go up about twenty degrees, so there’s a good layer of slick ice under the snow. (If there’s actually any, you know, actual snow at all. Frequently it’s just ice.)
Also, according to this handy IHS chart, new vehicle registrations in Michigan last year were split 37/58/5 between 4WD/FWD/RWD. In, say, Georgia, it was 15/65/20. (Source Car and Driver 3/14)
So, none of the roads are clear, and they’re crowded with people who just got transferred down from Chicago and Boston who’ve never had to drive on an unplowed, unsalted road.
Are you starting to see the problem?
February 12th, 2014 at 3:05 pm
Wish like hell that global warmening would hurry up so I can go back to bitching about the hot weather.
February 12th, 2014 at 3:09 pm
Well here is to hoping you have very little ice, and warm temps follow quickly
February 12th, 2014 at 3:15 pm
I mean, I get the logistics behind it causing problems. But holy crap, front page of Drudge and every other news outlet is screaming about a storm in the Biblical sense.
You got me with the hills… that’s one I didn’t think about. But I look at a top map and see all the drummonds left behind our area from the glaciers melting around the Great Lakes, and we still don’t go as crazy as you people south of Mason Dixon!
Our city and county have, ah, “cut back” on the hours they’re out plowing, because… more money from taxpayers! I understand the lack of plows on the road, that the counties set measly budgets and don’t spend money on equipment for a once-every-10-year phenomenon.
But, the INSANITY is what I can’t understand. The empty grocery stores and Y2K style craze… all over some damn white stuff.
PS: It’s hard to convey in type… but I’m just being a sarcastic snob for some entertainment to keep me from actually working, while at work.
I take our 4X4 Yukon with crappy tires for granted and love whiskey, so don’t grab the pitchforks to skin a Yankee white boy just yet. If anyone needs to get pulled outta the ditch, give me about 15 hours notice and I’ll be on my way
February 12th, 2014 at 3:25 pm
No worries.
Last snow (couple weeks ago) I pulled two cars out of a ditch with the F550.
February 12th, 2014 at 3:49 pm
Yeah, I’m jealous a little. And a little curious… why does a CPA need an F550?
If the answer is “because I can”, you win.
February 12th, 2014 at 4:21 pm
Na Zdorovie uncle.
February 12th, 2014 at 4:36 pm
I build houses these days.
February 12th, 2014 at 5:59 pm
I’ll defend the south on snow.
In places where it snows a lot, they know snow removal.
In the south they just push it around and use solar snow removal. It stays there until it melts.
I will say I’m laughing my butt off from my AZ desert.
People give me crap when there is 3 months of 100+ temps.
You don’t shovel heat, you don’t have to scrape it off your windshield, it doesn’t snarl traffic and my A/C comes on in about a minute while the heat can take 20 or more minutes to come on and it’s only 3 months instead of 4+ in more northerly climes.
Today, for instance, would be a decent summer day in Minnesota.
Last week I had to wear socks a couple mornings, that was a pain.
February 12th, 2014 at 6:01 pm
Josh —
OK, so you get how dangerous the roads are, compared to what you’re used to, almost. . .
Now factor in the lack of experience of ANY of the drivers around here dealing with it.
Urban Northerners* aren’t used to the lack of snow removal infrastructure or the fact that slick ice is almost ALWAYS a major componant of theses storms. . . (with new ice most days because the temps keep bouncing just above freezing during teh day and drop below freezing every night), they don’t have snow tires or chains anymore, because, hey! Sunny Warm South, amiright?
Locals simply don’t get the experience of driving these conditions because they aren’t common enough. And they don;t have chains or studded tires, either. (And too many of the ones with 4WD and AWD don’t know that its “Four Wheel GO, No Wheel STOP”.)
ANNNND. . . to compound the problems when the public infrastructure and driving skills aren’t up to dealing with these (meaning repair crews are screwed, too), we tend to have a LOT of exposed overhead electrical lines, especially in the coastal South (because digging in high water table areas for electrical services is a Really Dumb Idea). But, remember those ice storm conditions being so prevalent down here? Yeah, that does Bad Things to overhead lines. . . The odds aren’t bad that either your home, your work, or your kid’s school will end up without power at some point. And road clearance, power restoration, and emergency services will ALL be running behind.
So, the roads are SEVERELY unsafe. The drivers are REALLY bad at handling the conditions. And chances are, you aren’t going to work tomorrow, and you might well be stuck in the dark tonight.
People tend to go into “shelter in place” mode, along with the natural tendancy to hoarde up, because they do not know when a grocery trip will be safe and feasible (does no good if YOU can drive, if the STORE is closed).
Me? I have two nights worth of firewood sitting inside, enough no-oven prep grub to get through, a gas grill with a side burner (awesome for cooking!), plenty of blankets, candles, and charged LED lights, brand new tires on my car, and fully plan on working tomorrow (because otherwise I have to take personal leave). But I tend not to freak out about this sort of thing. Of course, I have plenty of experience driving in really crappy conditions, including an odd prediliction for going “mud doggin'” in two wheel drive compact hatchbacks as a teenager. 🙂
* Who come here in droves. . . for some reason rural Northerners don’t seem to feel the same screaming need to get out of their home towns, flee to somewhere totally opposite, and then spend every waking moment trying to replicate that which they fled from, but I digress.
February 12th, 2014 at 6:08 pm
Up to four inches of snow and sleet here. It took Better Half about four hours to get home from work. Good times.
February 12th, 2014 at 6:48 pm
Face it folks…. Al Gore is having his revenge!
Yes the south pole is melting.. and coming up there to the US.
We need to send Al to the South Pole so it follows him back.
February 12th, 2014 at 7:14 pm
And add to it, that at least where I live, you may have a few thousand feet of elevation change in-between your work, or the kid’s school. You’re not going to send a school bus over a curvy mountain road that barely has guardrails, with a few hundred foot drop over the edge, if it’s got any snow / ice on it at all.
February 12th, 2014 at 7:40 pm
Veeshir> I will say I’m laughing my butt off from my AZ desert.
Don’t laugh too hard, I’ve seen Phoenix, AZ in the rain.
A sprinkling of rain shuts your city down and traffic slows to a crawl. (At least it drains away pretty quickly afterwards.)
February 12th, 2014 at 10:24 pm
Yeah, but I don’t have to shovel that crap and I don’t drive into Phoenix very often. I’m in the east valley. Out with the coyotes and rednecks.
February 12th, 2014 at 11:08 pm
Hey, bring back that globull warming. I got 2 hours off yesterday because it “might” freeze”. It didn’t. Got a day and a half off last week because there was .02 inch of ice Thursday and half a day Friday cuz it “might” freeze”. Oh, I’m in Austin, the “hill country”. Want to see what happens when a bunch of bozos try and get up an ice covered hill of 5 percent? Well, the “big” hill here is about 14% If anybody could have gotten there, they could do about 80 MPH by the time they hit the bottom, riding on their cardboard “sleigh”.
February 12th, 2014 at 11:15 pm
I’m stuck at work. “They” say that it should all melt off by 1000 hours tomorrow, but we’ll see. Having done this rodeo before I’m not optimistic.
February 12th, 2014 at 11:45 pm
Snow tires? Don’t you folks in Indiana use chains Tam? That’s what “snow tires” are here in SW Wyoming; One’s regular tires with chains put on ’em. 🙂
February 13th, 2014 at 7:56 am
I haven’t actually seen too much Y2K-style runs on stores. They’re busy a bit before a storm, but there’s no real run on food and supplies or anything. People stock up on basics so they don’t need to go out during the storm, but that’s about it. It’s actually not all that crazy here. I think the news reports are designed to make it all sound worse than it is.
February 16th, 2014 at 5:44 pm
I am so looking forward to the day when I can move south from the People’s Republic Of New York until I reach a spot where, in answer to my question about annual snowfall, the respondent replies,” Snow? I seen snow onct, but I was just a little young’un and all I remember is that it was white and didn’t last long.”
Heaven, that will be.
Alternately, I’ll put my snow blower on the trailer behind the grandpa mobile and drive south until somebody asks me what it is.