
I ripped this off of Google Images. It’s from one of those cute Disney Ice Age films. For some reason Scrat is my favorite character.
I’ve survived the Snowpocalypse! The next Ice Age is upon us! This has been a storm of Biblical proportions!
I kid! But seriously we are not really equipped for ice and snow in the south. We don’t have the infrastructure for it. Atlanta has been shut down and there is gridlock on I-285. A baby was born on the side of the road there where conditions deteriorated more quickly than anticipated. Or the powers that be (and a whole bunch more people) scoffed just the same as I did at the idea of the severity of the storm. Whichever. It happened and lots of people ended up stranded on the side of the road around Atlanta. They didn’t decide to cancel school until it was already snowing. Staff and students ended up spending the night either on stranded school buses(as they made the brilliant decision to try to get the kids home after the storm was under way) or at the school(which was a smarter decision IMHO).
People have abandoned cars where they sit on the interstate and walked to the nearest open restaurant, store, or hotel to take refuge. This kind of thing often brings out the best in people. Heartwarming stories are emerging of people carrying food and supplies out to stranded motorists on atv’s. They’re opening their homes to complete strangers to give them a warm place to stay. They’re delivering babies on the side of the road.
It also brings out the crazies. The news keeps showing a young lady(a high schooler) after emerging from her encampment at the school. She tells the reporter that she was warm, that the staff fed them dinner, breakfast, and then lunch again. Her father is picking her up and he turns to the camera and says, “Somebody should have to pay for this. For the lack of planning. This was avoidable. Somebody should have to pay!” Pay whom? And for what? While it probably was, indeed, avoidable as he could have kept her home from school or picked her up earlier, she was cared for. He knew where she was, that she was safe.
I live three hours due South. From my house I can see the “Welcome to Florida” sign.
It didn’t get nearly that bad here. The local School Boards here made the decision on Tuesday that schools would be closed on Wednesday and then revisited the issue Wednesday and cancelled most schools for today. We don’t have fleets of sand trucks sitting on ready to salt the roads. They know this so they did the sensible thing. So while I did think it was going a little overboard to buy the grocery stores out of water, batteries, milk, and eggs a little prevention is worth a pound of cure.
We had sleet. Then a snowflake fell. Then more sleet. Then lots of rain. There was just enough snow to disappoint people that wanted to see some. We were under a hard freeze warning and kept the roads mostly clear due to a fear of black ice. That did occur in a few low lying places but in most places the ground was still much too warm so now it’s just wet. And cold. The temperature didn’t climb above 35 degrees F here yesterday. The forecast for today is supposed to be 54 F but it’s already 1:00p.m. and it’s still 35 F. I don’t think it’s gonna make it.
Yesterday, as I was freezing my tuchas off, I thought about how much worse other people have it. Brrr…it’s a lot colder in a lot of places. Didn’t make my tuchas any warmer, though. So I was still cold. And that started me thinking that maybe this is a storm of Biblical proportions. Localized rain that comes in suddenly causing flash floods that people aren’t prepared for. Snow storms for people in places, like here, where people aren’t prepared for them. We don’t sport ski apparel even in the dead of winter around here. It’s a bit ridiculous to see people in ski caps, scarves, puffy jackets, and Uggs in 50 degree F weather. You just make yourself colder because you’re sweating.
On the bright side, the weatherman says I can break out my shorts and flip flops by Saturday. We shall see.