The Deep South Faces A Deep Freeze

[Purveyor]

(CNN) -- A winter storm is slinging snow and ice on a broad swath of the South, where snow plows and salt trucks are nearly as rare as bikinis in a Minnesota winter.

Drivers in major metropolitan areas including Atlanta sat unable to move on gridlocked streets as schools and offices shut down early Tuesday, unleashing hordes of vehicles onto slushy roadways.

And while Northerners may laugh at their Southern friends' panic over a dusting of snow, the threat is real: With few resources to battle snow and ice, public works crews may have a difficult time keeping up with any significant accumulation.

Add to that the fact that millions of Southern drivers aren't used to driving on snow or ice, and things were getting tricky fast.

"This is a very dangerous situation," Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said Tuesday afternoon. "People need to stay at home. They need to stay there until conditions improve."

MORE...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/28/us/winter-weather/

[Renew Deal]

1. People must stay home until the inch of snow melts

[Warpy]

2. Fools knew it was going to be bad, they should have shut down before it became impassable.

They used to do that when I was a kid in NC. They wouldn't let school out until the city buses had stopped running and that's how we all got to school.

Either our parents had to come get us or we had to slog the several miles home.

It sucked.

[snooper2]

3. I can't believe we aren't getting anything here in DFW

missed out again...

[onethatcares]

5. me too, here in

sunny St. Pete floriduh it was 73 degrees today without the rain they said was coming.

I'm glad it didn't come down the peninsula though, the water pump out to protect the strawberry crop seems
to be causing sink holes.

[KentuckyWoman]

4. Atlanta drivers today have proven themselves to be complete dumbshits.

I'm here with my sister, who is in the end of life process at a hospice in North Atlanta. I left the hospice at noon and the 8 mile drive back to her house took over 2 hours. The surface streets were gridlocked. The road conditions were great. A little slush and a couple bridges with a little more solid but overall great.

Most of the people driving around this part of Atlanta are professionals. It's astonishing to me how many people smart enough to have a college degree are really too stupid to realize you can't just stop in the middle of an icy hill without causing a lot of problems behind you.

The stupid.... it burns.

[kentauros]

7. It's not stupidity; it's inexperience.

There's a big different between the two. And people who are professionals doesn't mean they are also degreed in physics. And then there's the fact that they likely don't have snow-tires or radials configured for snow.

You also have the problem of the news media doing little to educate their viewers. Locally, I have never seen the news media (broadcast or print) attempt to explain to people that the ground has to endure below-freezing temps continuously for at least three days (or more depending on the soil make-up) before the road surfaces will either freeze or hold snow without melting it. Instead, they focus on scaring people to keep them off the roads. And that just makes it even more difficult for those that do understand and know they can drive on slushy roads without fear.

[MisterP]

6. forecast for NOLA 35* and sleeting today

[steve2470]

8. snowing in northwest Florida now

[steve2470]

9. snow in Milton FL: