As an Alaskan, and as someone that has lived in a few western states with winter, I have been tracking the media reports from Atlanta with some amusement. It appears that many people don't understand the elementary physics of water, and obviously a few million people in the Atlanta area have no ability to perform the most basic judgement of what is possible.
The GA State and ATL mayor are getting hammered for not doing something before it snowed. Really? Anything done to modify the road surfaces before the snow would have ended up being locked under the ice that eventually formed once the warm ground cooled under the fresh snow. Sure they could have spread salt, but it would have ended up so diluted that ice would have still formed over the top. And salt or sand on a dry road with traffic results in the dry material being pushed to the edges helping no one later. It shows me that elementary concepts of physical sciences are lost on most of our country.
The only real thing the State and City could have done is tell the public to stay home unless absolutely required to travel. That works here in Alaska/Anchorage once or twice a year. The blow back if they are wrong about the what if is pretty minor. The blow back if they allow a few million people to spend the night stuck on a freeway cannot be recovered from. People are responsible for their decisions, but due to the loss of the ablity to perform judgement they will never hold themselves accountable for their choices.
Up here, when a snow event hits it will not be removed from the roads until it stops snowing. If it is viewed as a heavy snowfall event, the State will have belly scraper dump trucks knock off the snow in a shallow cut, but real removal won't take place until after it stops. Sand won't come out for a day or two after the graders have been through. You need to be able to handle it on your own. Still many are not and 50 to 100 cars end up wrecked in a day of snow. Most of us have studded tires. UPS and FedX chain up their trucks all the time. Yet you will still see people in small front wheel drive cars with out studded tires all winter. Stuck on hills or in snow plow berms they tried to drive through. No shovel, gloves or hat as they try to dig out their highcentered car.
As you folks down south are freezing we have been melting. We have lost 50 to 80 percent of our snow pack across much of the state. In some parts of town the side streets are covered in sheet ice due to melting snow berms. The main streets are clear due to traffic and better road crown designs. Now we are starting to freeze again during most of the day so the inches of ice on the side streets will remain until spring.
Here we also have one of the most interesting road closures I can ever recall. I have had to wait out a few avalanche road closures along Turnagain Arm, but now the town of Valdez is blocked off and the snow dam is blocking a river causing a lake to form behind it - damalanche. The up river road crew can't get through the lake to work the snow pile, and the down river road crew is affraid that they could die in a huge flood if they break through the snow berm. On Sunday they were saying "we will have it cleared by Monday", but its Thursday and they have not done much to it due to the significant flood outwash issue.
http://www.adn.com/2014/01/29/3297289/still-no-opening-date-for-avalanche.html
Sometimes it causes extremely poor choices like this one
http://www.adn.com/2014/01/29/3297584/jailed-avalanche-crossers-were.html
