Forgive Atlantans. Their long johns have been in such a wad, they may have been too distracted to notice.
But the city isn’t the only one in the Southeast having a bad week.
The same storm that paralyzed Atlanta has led to 10 weather-related deaths across Mississippi and Alabama.
The eight-lane Ravenel Bridge that feeds into downtown Charleston, S.C., was closed down nearly two days due to icing. City offices in Macon only reopened at noon Thursday.
Maybe Atlanta got a national media bump for all video footage of the glacier that was I-285. But all around the region, governors in Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina Tuesday all declared states of emergency. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal beat the rush and declared his on Monday night.
Hearing that central Alabama was in for just a “light dusting” of snow, Alabama Rep. Mack Butler of Rainbow City decided to make his two-hour commute to Montgomery for Tuesday’s legislative session. He wound up spending the night in a truck stop outside Birmingham, the interstate glazing over just as the Perimeter had.
Expecting the storm to hit further south, theAlabama’s emergency agency sent most of its snow equipment below Montgomery.
“It looked like the zombie apocalypse,” Butler told the Associated Press. In all, only 40 of 102 House members made it to the capital that day.
The Mississippi Highway Patrol was called out to 608 accidents in the southern half of the state between midnight Tuesday and 12:30 p.m. Wednesday. As I-55 iced over in Jackson, the Red Cross helped state troopers distribute drinks and snacks to stranded drivers.
In Louisiana, both LSU and Tulane were closed down for two days. Lengthy sections of I-10 and I-12, the main thoroughfares for New Orleans and Baton Rouge, were closed due to ice Tuesday night.
Further east, areas of I-10 had to be closed in the Florida panhandle. In downtown Jacksonville, Florida Department of Transportation crews made do with what they had to keep the Main Street Bridge from icing over.
“We don’t normally use salt but we do use sand because that’s what we use for fuel spills,” FDOT spokeswoman Gina Busscher told the Florida Times Union.
South Carolina state government offices reopened Thursday after 2,000 DOT workers responded to the storm. According to The (Columbia) State newspaper, State Law Enforcement Division and the Department of Natural Resources officers answered 3,536 calls for service during the storm, including 1,799 collisions and 368 abandoned vehicles.
There were still reports Thursday of black ice in downtown Charleston.
Snow fall in south central North Carolina was limited to 1 or 2 inches but frigid temperatures have discouraged a melt-off. Thursday morning lows in Charlotte hit 7 degrees.
Charlotte Mecklenberg police reported more than 600 car wrecks between 4 p.m. Tuesday and 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Charlotte Observer.
Local school administrators made a different assessment as the storm approached Tuesday. Guy Chamberlain, Charlotte Mecklenberg Schools superintendent for operations, saw all he needed to know on weather maps to announce at 10:30 a.m. that schools were to be dismissed two hours early.
When the snow began to fall around 4:15 p.m., all district school buses had reported all students had been dropped off.
“Having seen what was going on in Atlanta (in retrospect), it was a no-brainer to make the decision to go ahead and close schools,” Chamberlain told the Observer.
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