Well, Atlanta – we survived. The first great winter weather scare this season was legitimate – even conservative weather models showed metro Atlanta in the cross hairs of some kind of inclement weather. Yet when many Atlantans awoke Saturday, barely a dusting of snow covered many yards.
“We overreacted again!” came the paraphrased cries of many. Northern transplants to north Georgia mocked us for leaving work and school early and pillaging the grocery stores over what ended up being a non-event. These criticisms, however, were wrong – it was an event.
As I covered traffic from 3-8 p.m. on WSB, the early mad rush home peaked early in the afternoon. Heavy rain fell, as air temperatures were just above freezing and pavement temps were closer to 40 degrees. There are some reports of sleet in this first round of weather, but nothing significant. After a few hours of city-wide gridlock, the roads were nearly empty by 5 or 6 p.m. and had even begun to dry.
The welcome early dinner hour ghost town on Atlanta highways allowed GDOT crews to treat the interstates before the next wave of precipitation arrived. It did in the 7 p.m. hour and this time in the form of snow, freezing rain and rain. The northwestern suburbs had the lowest temperatures and the most snowfall and ice. But freezing rain began bringing poles, wires and trees down as far south as Dunwoody, Sandy Springs and the city of Atlanta in the late evening hours. Thousands lost power.
Callers to both Mark Arum’s talk show and mine between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m. chronicled the conditions on WSB. The WSB Traffic Team meticulously laid out the growing list of roads that began seeing accumulation and freezing over. Thankfully, most of us did what Gov. Deal and other public officials urged us to do: the roads were nearly empty when the bad weather arrived.
Saturday morning, we awoke to a frozen mess on many bridges and ramps. Smilin’ Mark McKay, Arum, and Veronica Harrell from our Traffic Team covered multiple tractor trailer wrecks and ramp closures on the ice. The temperatures in the 20s assured whatever fell from the sky overnight – snow or not – would freeze. Crews struggled to treat frozen ramps along the Downtown Connector and in the Interstate 75/Interstate 285 interchanges both in Cobb and Clayton counties. Some vehicles slid into HERO trucks that blocked these ramps. But enough people stayed off of the roads to keep the crash count low.
Temperatures in northwest metro Atlanta stayed the lowest and that area got the most snow. So that area dealt with the most ice and some counties’ schools stayed closed through Tuesday, thanks to the icy conditions. That’s four days, including the weekend, that some counties were out of commission.
We are just short of three years from the dubious anniversary of Snowmageddon. Since that awful experience, we have treated every wintry scare as if it could happen again. Fortunately, the weather has never been that bad. But what made the 2014 storm so bad was the traffic. Last Friday’s winter storm could have been disastrous, had it hit slightly earlier and dropped just a bit more ice and snow.
So, Atlanta, instead of pointing fingers and laughing at the overreaction, use your whole hands and pat yourselves on the back. The weather and roads were dangerous for all of us and stayed that way for several days for some. We took this seriously and stayed off of the roads. As soon as we stop doing that is as soon as that 2014 debacle happens again.
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