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My Atlanta Winter Storm 2014

A wintry snow scene in Piedmont Park ...

A wintry snow scene in Piedmont Park in Atlanta, January 2003. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Winter Storm Scenario

The day was Monday January 27th, 2014. I got up extra early to run errands and make bank deposits. I checked the weather forecast before I left which called for 1 -2 inches of snow for Tuesday from Accuweather.com. For five years, I lived in south Florida, where the weather can turn ugly in a matter of minutes in the form of severe thunderstorms, torrential floods, and hurricanes. It’s a habit I still am grateful for today. I noticed that it said 1-2 inches of snow forecasted for the Atlanta area. My first thought is “They aren’t playing around with this storm.” We received several warnings about snow only to be light dustings all winter long. For the meteorologists at Accuweather.com to mention 1-2 inches of snow in Atlanta, there must be a good chance of snow accumulation. The words “snow” and “accumulation” are bad news in the South.

My Experience

My story reads like this. I don’t have a car (at this time). I take MARTA, taxis, and Uber. If I need to, I can always rent a car. If those methods can’t get me where I want or need to go, I have  a boatload of determination, a working pair of 11’s, and hiking boots to put on them to take me anywhere I want to go within the city within reason. I live less than 5 miles from my current source of cash flow. The chances of my getting stuck in the snow are extremely bad. If I did somehow get stuck in the snow, I still remember some survival techniques from the Boy Scouts. I am ready for almost anything (or so I’d like to think).

I was on the phone with a friend Tuesday morning and laziness was setting in. She prodded me to get out the door and get all my errands done, like make my IRS payment, and go to the grocery store at 10:30am. I pulled up the weather radar on Accuweather.com, and noticed the snow was coming towards Atlanta. Out the door I went. On Tuesday, January 28th the storm hit around 12:15pm. It didn’t hit like a hurricane does. It hit like a lamb does, gently falling snow falling from the sky. No high winds, “thunder snow,”  or snowfalls of over a foot which I experienced in the Blizzard of 1993 in Birmingham, AL. Just snow. It was 25f in Atlanta when it started snowing and fell to 18f, which is unseasonably cold for our fair city. My “long johns” were doing their job, and I was warm. All my errands were done by 1pm. I was safe at home and napping by 3:30pm. Snow totals at my home were about 0.8 inches of snow.

What Others Experienced

Other people I knew got out of work in time to leave and make it onto the highways where gridlock ensued. It was almost like a sort of panic set in. I was almost run over repeatedly crossing the street in Buckhead when the snow started. Then approximately 6,000,000 people were trying to make it home all at the same time. Some people in my hometown of Birmingham, AL fared worse. These are college-educated people who have the same resources that I do. For some, their employers didn’t allow their employees to leave. School administrators didn’t allow kids to leave the schools. “How could this happen in this day and age?” I thought.

Where did it all go wrong?

How could so many people get stuck in the snow? How did so many people get stranded on the side of the road, stuck at school or at work? Where did the bad information come from? Here is how that happens. I noticed about a year ago a debate between forecasters regarding hurricane tracking that there were multiple models. There was a European model that was proving more accurate for predicting hurricane tracking. The model the National Weather Service was using wasn’t working as well. Could the same thing happen with tracking and predicting winter storms also? I believe it is the main reason things went wrong. This blog post from Jeremy Kappell, a meteorologist Louisville, KY TV station WDRB confirms that idea.

Lack of Personal Responsibility Maybe?

This might irritate people. As I mentioned earlier in this blog post, I saw on Monday morning that the forecast on Accuweather.com was calling for 1-2 inches of snow on Monday morning. If you’ve lived in the South for any considerable period of time, you’ll now that snow doesn’t happen here very often. When the forecasters…any forecasters mention “snow” and “inches” in the same sentence, it means trouble. “Oh it’s going to miss to the south, the north a light dusting, etc.” For the forecasters, this is an really bad error. Fo rthe citizens, it’s called “denial.” I remembered when I called for Hurricane Frances to hit Palm Beach county in September 2004. Everyone I talked to said “Hurricanes don’t hit Palm Beach county.” They were unprepared.

Governor Nathan Deal and Mayor Kasim Reed caught a flak from reporters including Al Roker and Jim Cantore for not having Atlanta prepared better. Meanwhile, government officials make decisions based on the information the decisions that the forecasters give them. In my humble opinion, the forecasts, some of whom got the forecast wrong, were jumping the gun to deflect blame from themselves. It also allowed the meteorologists a rare opportunity at stardom. Also reporters have latched on to the Rahm Emanuel quote “Never waste a good crisis” and run with it lately. The media storm and blame game began before the snow had even stopped falling.

The Bottom Line (as I see it)

We were all given the same information. Some heeded it and acted wisely. Others did not. School children are exempt from this because they are at the mercy of the school officials (yikes!). The main lesson from all of this is that we take the weather for granted. Whether it’s tornadoes, drought, hurricanes, snow, blizzards, extreme heat or cold, we forget that the weather can cause us extreme discomfort, and even death. I learned one of the best lessons as a former sailor and as someone who was sporadically “residentially challenged.” The weather is bigger than all of us and has no respect for us. Respect it and watch it carefully. Extreme climate change due to extraordinary events is what we think killed the dinosaurs after all.

Disclosure: I do not work for Accuweather.com, nor do I receive any compensation for this blog. They are my trusted source for weather information. I stopped trusting Weather.com when they started posting animal slaughter videos on their web site about a year ago. They have taken the videos down by now, but it told me that they were more interested in political statements than being responsible meteorologists. I am not a meteorologist, but my educational background is in nuclear physics. Weatther has been a fascination and hobby of mine since 1975 when I rode out my Hurricane Eloise under a desk at Peter Crump Elementary in Montgomery, AL. I was in the third grade. I get the weather.

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Michael Neely

My name is Michael Neely and I am an entrepreneur, blogger, FOREX trader, coin collector and businessman. I have also been known as a waiter, bartender, Series Three (Commodities and Currencies Options and Futures). I currently live in New England with my beautiful fiancée, Patsy and Pip, our Jack Russell terrier.

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