As an Atlanta resident who lived through this disaster, this video is great! You called out all the major contributing factors. The timing of the snow, which usually doesn't stick in the middle of the day in Atlanta, the gradual changes in the forecasted area, which caused confusion due to not understanding the forecast, the lack of city equipment to clear roads, and the naturally horrible traffic that turned a routine snowstorm into one of the worst Atlanta disasters in recent decades. I'm also glad you pointed out how difficult it is to predict where the boundary between snow and rain is, since that has a HUGE effect on how much snow we get here in Atlanta. For years after 2014, most of the "snow" forecasts ended up being mostly rain, with almost no snow accumulation. Excellent job calling out the similar snowstorm a few weeks before and the other storm after that were both completely unmemorable, because everyone stayed home instead of going to work/school those days. The real disaster wasn't the snow, it was the insane traffic, accidents, and the fact that it was routine week day where everyone was away from home when the storm hit. The fact that when schools closed in the middle of the day, everyone I knew suddenly left at the exact same time, turning our regularly bad traffic into a complete gridlock. The fact that busses normally service multiple schools in a single day, so one bus getting stuck ended up stranding multiple schools. It was like a bank run, except with Atlanta roads. My experience was that I was sick with a minor cold, so I stayed home from college that day. I'm incredibly thankful that I stayed home. If I had gone to school I would have been stranded, since Marta quickly stopped operating once things got bad. I ended up helping a few other men push cars up the steep hill outside my home. One of the guys was a runner who called the road up the hill a "graveyard" of abandoned and stuck cars, and it was still early afternoon. I still remember the look of pity he had on one driver who was obviously struggling in a car not built for the icy hills. It felt good to help out, even if some of the people I helped never made it home that night. My mother drove for hours and hours in the snow, and finally parked her car in a Publix lot and walked the last 2 miles home. She arrived some time around 9pm. I had a lot of friends who ended up getting stuck somewhere, and a few friends who opened their homes to people stuck nearby. After I got too tired and cold to keep trying to get cars unstuck, I went back inside and made some hot chocolate. That week was a disaster for most people in Atlanta, but I had fun helping people and relaxing at home. It was a surreal experience to be sitting at home watching things unfold. Anecdotally, no one really expected that much snowy, even if that's what the forecast had said that morning. I remember a few people being completely caught off guard by the snow, likely because they either remembered the warm Monday, or because they had only paid attention to the Monday forecast that said Atlanta wouldn't get any snow. The forecast changed pretty quickly, but no one seemed to notice or care. I think everyone latched onto the term "polar vortex" because it definitely felt like that storm came out of nowhere, and everyone was looking for explanations for why no one predicted the storm. It's incredibly ironic that the morning forecast was 100% accurate. It's just that no one paid attention. If schools had been canceled that morning due to the 80% chance of snow, I'm sure things would have gone down very differently. None of the other snow storms have had the same effect as Snowmageddon, even though we've gotten more physical snow other times. Mostly because Atlanta now primitively salts the roads quite aggressively before any snow storm, people are a lot more willing to stay home "just in case", and schools now close if there's a good chance of snow. It does mean some makeup days at the end of the year, but I think it's worth it to avoid a similar disaster. It really was the perfect storm of the worst possible snow timing, bad city planning, bad communication, and everyone being collectively unprepared for snow.
Hey Alex! Thanks for sharing your firsthand experience of this event. It's incredible to see not only the number of people who were affected, but the number of people like you who helped. I'm glad Atlanta has taken steps to make sure a disaster like this doesn't happen again. Cheers!
Alex I JUST missed it. I was working at Delta at the time and they were being cagey about us leaving. We were finally released by 4. I immediately got on 75N because I lived in Buckhead at the time. But when I realized traffic was only barely moving, I took the Sylvan Rd. exit. That's what saved me from getting stuck. My 20 minute drive to 26th St., took an hour and a half. But I made it home safely. I'm so glad this doc actually mentioned the black ice. It was treacherous, and 2 inches of snow is definitely not that big of a deal. But black ice IS.
I was living in Roswell (Northern suburb of Atlanta) and working in Dunwoody at the time. I tried leaving work when everyone else did, I got about a block then turned around and parked and went back to work until after midnight. Just walking was an icy experience and it was easy to slip and fall. I ended up trying again around midnight when Google showed traffic on Georgia 400 clearing a bit. It still took 5 hours to get home, and I ended up walking about a mile after my car wouldn't get up an icy hill. I grew up with real winters and I'm sure I learned driving skills that helped me that night, but once the roads are covered with ice, driving skill doesn't matter unless you have studded tires. Which nobody in the area has.
Thank God for Marta. I rode the train through all that mess. I could see the traffic backed up as the train went over I-20. It was a very very horrible day.
I avoided getting stuck in that foolishness by maybe an hour or so. As soon as the snowflakes started coming down heavily and I saw that all the traffic on the west side of Atlanta Metro was red on Google Maps, I told my coworkers "I'm headed home, I'll sign back on when I get there." I didn't wait for anyone to "let" me go.
Many people survived in Lahaina by following the same logic. They saw the issues and didn't bother waiting for someone to tell them "Hey this is serious, evacuate or die". Sadly too many people are the embodiment of a dumb protagonist in horror films despite how much they scream at their screens "DON'T OPEN THE DOOR"
Live in Minneapolis, MN with a job that can be done remotely and do the same. Even with proper salting and snow removal efforts, rush hour that's backed up when it's bone dry is going to be an absolute mess with a winter storm no matter how accustomed the drivers are. Benefits me cruising home with no traffic, but also benefits everyone else by making myself one fewer person out on the roads for all the people who can't duck out of work early.
I think what also made this storm's impact so bad is that Atlanta is home to a LOT of people who grew up in the Snow belt. Many of those people (myself included) saw 2 inches of winter precipitation and completely disregarded it. Many of us failed to realize that the reason we were able to still go about business as usual was because our hometowns had crews, equipment, and other resources to mitigate the impact of winter weather.
And people that know how to drive. People that don't have summer tires on etc. Towns and cities that have to deal with the snow all the time are not the difference maker. They attempt to keep the highways and the main roads clear first. And then it trickles down from there. They constantly drive around on unplowed roads with multiple inches of snow on them. They don't cancel life and stay inside until the plows come and clear all the residential roads.
@@albundy06 Yup--when I worked overnights many years ago, got off work around 6AM to like 8 inches of unplowed snow on the residential roads the last couple miles and a car that has 5 inches of ground clearance. Made it home just fine--all about keeping the momentum up.
I'm from the (216) CLE, I definitely can see why those motorists got complacent since they're under the impression that ATL has a winter road plow system even though snow barely falls down there.
It really is all about the infrastructure setup and how well they can handle the event. Atlanta is pretty much the southern edge of where folks in gov't might *maybe* consider having something on standby for snow or ice, but accumulating snow is so rare that I believe the city errs on the side of not spending money on expensive equipment that may not get used for years. I've encountered northerners who laugh at FL's response to the winter storm there in late 1989 but the nearest winter equipment to FL is going to be in northern GA/AL or western SC. 500 miles away. A glaze of ice plus some snow with said winter storm was enough to close almost every bridge north of a line from Daytona to Cedar Key, as it should have been because there was no way to make those crossings safe until the ice melted naturally.
I will never forget it. Took an hour to drive 1 block. Parked in the Walmart Parking lot on Ashford Dunwoody.. Walked a mile to my wife's work, drove her car down the wrong side of the road, parked it in a church parking lot, then walked a half mile back to our apartment. So many colleagues spent the night on the hwy. We had a couple of colleagues stay in our apt, since it was so close and they could walk there. Everyone left their cars on the road, and people helped strangers. It was a terrible but also great day.
Similar story here. Wife was stuck on Highway 92 in Roswell and I had to borrow a neighbors Lexus GX with low range 4WD to get her. Roads were littered with stranded cars that made it difficult to dodge but I made it. Kids were stuck at a daycare that we ultimately walked about a mile to pick them up the next morning.
I was in 4th grade when this storm hit in BMH AL. A decade later I still vividly remember anxiously sitting in my classroom, watching dozens of my classmates leave before the calls for pickup slowed to a stop. I slowly realized that my parents wouldn’t make it to get my little sister and I anytime soon. My sister and I were retrieved when the school served us dinner, and we didn’t have to stay the night, thanks to an uncle and aunt who lived nearby and borrowed an off-road vehicle from a neighbor. I recall seeing so many cars abandoned/stuck, how frightened we were because of fallen trees/power lines and the steep country roads. The house was without power and was running on a generator, my sister and I slept in sleeping bags with our cousins in their beds. It wasn’t until two days later that my mother, a hospital worker, finally managed to return to us, and three days before my father, a police officer, could. Our little community rebounded quickly, though. Once the weather cleared and things settled, there was a big thank-you party for first responders and teachers at our school, some teachers endearingly made t-shirts to commemorate “surviving the snowmageddon.”
We in Texas still remember the winter of 2022 😅. Similar event occurred here too with our power outages. It wasn’t much about the snow but more about the temperatures. I remember my city dropped to -7°F because of the wind chill
I was in 6th grade when this happened at the time. I was stuck on a bus in a highway for a while. Then coincidentally one of my uncles was there, pulled over to the bus and picked me up and I headed home. It was fun and I made snowmen while me and my friend in 5th grade played Cod ghosts, fifa 14, and Rayman legends
As a native NYer who lived through Snowmaggadeon in ATL, it wasn't functionally two inches of snow, but ultimately 2 inches of ice. I got off work in Midtown ATL at about 10pm and remember it being freezing out with all that hardening slush still on the road, and I knew right then it would be a disaster. It was a perfect storm of unlikely events. Here's a quick rundown: yes it snowed two inches during the day, but the most important factor was that about 6pm it rained just a tiny bit (only about 10min of rain), but enough to turn the two inches of snow, to a thick slush. Then the Temps dropped at night, and all that slush froze to a 2in thick layer of ice. THAT was the issue. What I meant by a perfect storm of unlikely events was that it took erratic Temps that went from, cold enough to snow, then slightly warm enough to rain, then back down to sub-freezing... all within a span of a few hours. That situation is highly atypical. I lived in NY for my 1st 20 years and have never seen that specific weather pattern before. On top of that, if it had rained even just 15min longer, it would have melted all the snow. Of course, Atlanta's inability to clear the 2 inches of snow was a huge issue, but to me, the issue was the fact that it all turned to ice. If it never froze and remained two inches of just snow, people would've still been able to drive to some degree, but two inches of solid ice is virtually impossible to drive on. Plus, plowing 2" of solid ice is much harder than plowing snow. When they did plow over the next several days, it tore up ALL the refectors on the dashed lines on every freeway in metro Atlanta. When didn't have reflectors back for many months, it took years before even half of them were replaced, and we still have a lot that are still not installed to this day. Of course, we got the nation's ridicule about how a mere 2" of snow absolutely ground metro Atlanta to a halt, but again, it wasn't the initial 2" of snow, it was the formation of 2" of ice, and that's a HUGE difference... and everyone keeps missing the full context.
As a Southerner (North Carolina), thank you for explaining why winter weather in the South can be a nightmare that people in other parts of the country don't seem to understand. It's almost never snow. Usually first it rains (washing away the salt), then it sleets/snows, then it freezing rains on top or some combination of that in various layers..but almost always after it first rains and washes away the salt. You don't get a lot of practice driving in it. The few times you do, the roads are never the same condition twice.
A lot of people don't understand how serious even an inch of snow can be if the infrastructure isn't prepared for it. When I was a kid living in Eastern Washington(a high desert that rarely sees precipitation), my city was regularly shut down for days at a time from mere inches of snow because of a combination of inexperienced drivers and a lack of salt/snowplows. Even rain could sometimes shut down the city because of lack of driving experience and roads that accumulate water because they're not built to shed water.
If it had been just snow, there would not have been much of a problem, but when it all gets coated in ice...nobody can really drive on ice. There was about 1/2" of ice on top of the snow.
@@harryparsons2750 yeah like how its incompetent midwestern infrastructure isin't built to accommodate the hot floridian sun, its not supposed to snow in atlanta, thats why the infrastructure isint built for it
That amount of snow and ice is absolutely nothing. Im laughing at how much trouble that amount of snow caused. Its not infrastructure, its just having good tires and not driving like morrons.
I was down there making a delivery at the time and was stuck in their traffic. I had enough fuel to keep my truck running for days and wasn’t worried. I keep a case of MRE’s and water bottles under my bunk for emergencies. I let 2 families join me in my truck to keep warm. I let their kids play video games on my Xbox to keep them busy. I handed out some of the spare food and water to folks in nearby cars who had enough fuel to idle for the night. While it was a horror for some people, I saw it as a time of showing how compassionate a majority of the population is helping out one another. I saw other truckers like myself and people in their homes nearby helping. To the Jaxsons and the Broxsons ( no idea if I spelled that right) I hope y’all are doing well and was happy to have you in my little mobile paradise!
You're awesome, man and that's completely true. In the worst of times, you see the best of humanity. Completely off topic but it reminds me of another example. Earlier this year, a town near, had a EF-2 tornado hit and though it didn't cause a ton of damage in the town, it did destroy the roof of the home of one of the guys from my church, as well as damage his garage and barn. At first light, when they realize that he had been hit, the entire town rallied around him with the church Facebook at local groups calling all able and willing to get out there and help with the cleanup to one of the local roofers rebuilding his roof for him. It's these kinds of events that restore your faith in humanity. Just people helping people, with no ulterior motives. The way it should be.
That's a lovely story, thank you for sharing. I bet those kids look back on that as a happy memory because of you. Playing video games in a tractor-trailer during a snow storm would be so cool.
@ my son loves it! He's been on 100's of drives with me now during his summer breaks. He's actually helped me upgrade my gaming setup in the back with some of his ideas. I used to have a moderate 30" tv back there. He spotted that the windows in back cloth covers screws could be removed so I could fit a larger mount so now i've got a 50" tv back there! I regret not ever liking up with any of those families socials to see how they're all doing but Its definitely a memory I'll never forget. Especially since this past weekend I ended up needing my own rescue. This past weekend I was up in Wisconsin when the temps dropped to -20ish. My truck blew a coolant line inside the aircompressor (something I couldn't roadside fix myself). Because I had no coolant I couldn't idle and my apu (aux power unit) wouldn't start. I was a good 50 miles from any place of note. A state trooper found me and my dog huddled in my bunk under the blankets while waiting for roadside assiastance to show up. He let me and my dog hang out in his cruiser for a hour while we waited for roadside to show up and fix the truck. A perfect storm of shit breaking all at the same time. Me and my dog wouldn;t have froze, I had a heated blanket. But damn those couple hours sucked. He made things a lot more comfortable
as someone who got affected by snowmageddon 2014, THANK YOU for talking about this!!! it was one of the most terrifying things that i’ve ever experienced but also sparked my interest in meteorology. i vividly remember the shit that it caused. nothing is more terrifying than hearing the cracking of an old tree falling atop the house you’re in because of the ice, snow, and winds. i did want to eat the ice though.
@@shanelizotte6318 You missed the entire point of the video. It's not about northern places used to getting snow and ice every year, for months out of the year. It's about places much further south that don't get snow and ice on a yearly basis and not having the systems, infrastructure, or necessary equipment to handle that snow and ice.
I was hit hard by the second Snowmageddon (more commonly known as the Snowpocalypse) in NC--got let out early, went to Target to pick up groceries, snow came suddenly and we were stranded on the roads for 2 hours. I remember seeing cars in ditches, people walking home on the highway, etc. The famous meme from that day was taken in the area!
I honestly didn’t know the US had a Snowmageddon. In 2020 Newfoundland had a storm called that that made it on the news in Texas and I thought that was the only one
@@Legority Well where then? No one's asking for your address, just the city or, if you prefer, the general region of NC (e.g. Mountains, Piedmont, or Coastal Plain). Would be interesting to know how snow affects different parts of NC.
Very cool to see you cover our area - but man that day was nuts. I worked at a grocery store less than 2 miles away. They begged us to come in so we walked to work to join the chaos, passing by cars jamming on icy hills and abandoning them until it was over. Worked the fuel center until we ran out of gas, then helped inside - people were grateful. Some folks slept in the store that night because they couldn't make it home (customers and associates). A friend who grew up in PA was able to drive and get us back home and we just had a snow party. His dad was stuck on the highway for about 36 hours. News reports of neighbors bringing food and water to people sleeping in their cars, offering shelter. Any risk of snow in the forecast and the city goes into lockdown mode now.
Getting to help others during these times is one of the best feelings ever. I had a bit of the same situation when hurricane Helene came a couple months ago and I’m sure people were very grateful for your help ❤
I had 3 friends who realized they would never make it home so they came to my house which was closer to downtown and we just hung out till the next day. It was insane how bad things got.
I lived in Columbus, GA during this. I grew up in Michigan so that snow was nothing to me, but it was magical seeing the kids in my apartment complex seeing snow and playing in it for the first time. ❤
When I was really little, we moved from Louisiana to Colorado. Once the snow started, my sister and I were out in the snow playing every day. Eventually the other little kids on the block joined us. Their parents told my parents that their kids were sick of the snow and cold, but seeing my sister and I having so much fun made them rethink. We only lived there three years, but it was magical!
@beststorytime4325 definitely made a snowman, had snowball fights. It was great bc this time I was prepared and not stuck in the wild like snowmageddan 😂 just stayed at home
I really love that you not only focused on the problems that lead to making this a huge mess, but also how people did their best in a bad situation. Getting together online, helping each other, etc. It's very easy to look what could have been done better, and that is a massively important thing to do, but it's just as important to see what was done RIGHT. Also, huge props to actively working against the "It's not a big deal for us, why should it be for them?" mindset. Really great video as always!
As a Southerner, it was great to hear that people don't always understand how bad our roads can be down here. I happen to live in Knoxville which got a whopping 9-10 inches of snow last month, our worst since the 93 Storm of the Century. Because we were immediately hit with one of these "Polar Vortex" cold snaps after, the snow stayed on the ground for a week and where it melted during the day in the sun, it immediately turned into ice at night. It's also a hilly town, and we have so little snow equipment the only roads they were able to keep plowed with the snow falling were I-40/75. Everywhere else you were on your own. The only reason I ever saw a snowplow get to my house is that someone got a Bobcat from somewhere to plow, and that wasn't until 5 days after the snow fell. Knoxville was largely closed that entire week.
Today is 1/10/2025 and there’s about 4 inches of snow in Atlanta, GA, plus ice rain to come. On the west coast, Los Angeles, CA, is on fire. May the lord have mercy on us all.
I think a major part of why nobody was prepared was how warm it has been prior to this. I recall walking the neighbor’s dog in a tshirt and shorts the day prior. Nobody took it seriously until the snow started sticking, which was around 1pm. I was in middle school at the time and remember how frantic it got when they tried to get buses for us, as we had the latest release time out of the K-12 program. One of my neighbors walked to pick up his son, and the school basically sent all the kids from the neighborhood walking home with him. My parents ended up getting home at around 9pm. Several of my classmates had to spend the night at school! Nowadays, if I see snow in the forecast, I stay home.
Dude, it was typical warm rainy weather for the 3 days prior, and then I walked out the factory working mornings, s I had been in for 12 hrs at 6 pm, and everything was frozen it was wild
Prior to the storm I lived in New England for 37 years. I lived in a town of 7000 people that had seven snowplows. I moved to Atlanta and County of 1 million people that had seven snowplows. It wasn’t a matter of being unprepared as much as it was there isn’t a need for that many snowplows per capita in Atlanta
Ooh something I actually have a personal anecdote on. I was 10 when this happened, and it was pretty much exactly as you described. I didn't wind up staying overnight but it took my mother about 7 hours to get from the house to the school, and another 4 for us to get back. The highways were a complete loss, if you went on them at any point you were cooked, the surface roads were bad, but overcomeably bad. The only thing you undershoot how rare snow is in Atlanta, we haven't gotten 2 inches since snowmageddon, snow accumulation is a once every few years kind of thing, not once or twice a year.
I was in college at GSU when this happened. They shut down classes at 12:00pm and I was minutes away from getting on the interstate when my friends called me to ask them to get them a ride to their dorms from school. I turned around got them, took them back and then spent the next 6 hours without moving a mile. I hear on the radio that the i-75 North was shut down, so I turned around and was stuck in my friends dorm for 2 days. Had I actually got on the I-75 North when i got out of school, I would have been stuck out there for over 24 hours. I am so happy you covered this! This was such a massive moment for people we lived through it-not to be dramatic, but this was absolutely INSANE.
So, as a resident of Oconee County, GA, I remember this vividly. Back in 2011 a similar-ish situation happened, albeit snowfall accumulation was much higher during that event. The 2011 Snowpocalpyse was especially confusing since Nathan Deal was inaugurated into office the day after the first major round of snow and sleet came by. I remember getting on my bus in the 5th grade and seeing the snow finally falling around noon. The snow wasn't hard like it normally was, it was fluffy. I remember the images of Atlanta being frozen over and essentially paralyzed and was more glad than ever to live in the middle of nowhere. Great job covering it as well! This was quite the trip from memory lane I'll say that for sure.
Hey! I was curious as to what your experience of 2011/2014 was like. That detail about the snow being fluffy makes a lot of sense, and something I wouldn't think about in Ohio--most of our lake effect snow is fluffly, giant flakes. Glad you made it out of both events with minimal damage!
@@weatherboxstudios I remember I lost power briefly during the event in 2011, but given I got close to 4-6in of snow/sleet as I was close to Athens. The only reason I remember the power going out during the 2011 event was because that Monday afternoon I was playing Sonic & Knuckles on my mom's PC that day and I got to Sandopolis Zone, went to go outside for a bit, only to go back inside to see the power was off and my progress had been lost. If anything that 2011 event was somehow more insane given that I still remember there being snow on the ground a week or so after the Arctic blast began. (I was thinking it was that Monday but I forgot I had that day of school off due to MLK Holiday. That Tuesday was when I went back, and it was delayed due to black ice because the snow kept melting and refreezing.). In my neck of the woods, the 2011 event was the worst (Given it's the most snow the Athens, GA Area has seen in forever, that makes sense.) I also vividly remember the Early February Winter/Ice Storm being a bigger threat and more significant in East-central and some parts of Northeast Georgia. First time I remember the Oconee County Police department have a press conference on a winter event. I never had seen that much ice than I did during the February event. Any sort of water that was running just froze, straight up. I remember picking up like 2in thick icicles from the bottom of my Dad's F150 it was insane! Also had that week off after the Monday due to the threat of the ice refreezing. I was one of the people competing in the regional 4H competition and barely anybody showed up that Saturday because of that winter storm knocking out power for most of East-Central Georgia. (Then to go home and get hit by the earthquake that night was definitely an experience. Winter weather here is rare, but from my standpoint, when it DOES happen here near Athens, it's often significant and fascinating from a meteorological perspective. Haven't had anything REAL big in my neck of the woods since early 2018, but there were a few snow events in 2022 that I remember going through that January. TLDR: Winter Storms down here are interesting.
I'd been living in Cobb County, GA when the snowstorms in 2011 and 2014 happened. In 2011's snowstorm my sisters and I played in the snow and even made a few snowmen along with my best friend and her sister since we'd been next-door neighbors, and in 2014 that was a bit more wild. My mom worked at the elementary school that my sisters and I'd attended and my dad worked close to Atlanta, so while my youngest sister could get home with my mom, my younger sister and I (along with my best friend and her sister as well) were all stuck at the middle school we were attending. We got lucky with a bus arriving 10 minutes after our school usually ended for the day, and it happened to be routing to our neighborhood with an extra stop that day for a neighborhood along the way. I think it took between half an hour to an hour for us all to get home, but we were all definitely enjoying the snow the entire ride and walk to our houses. While we basically waited for the snow to get cleared and melt away my dad basically let us use two of his cement-mixing tubs as makeshift sleds, which I, uh... broke both of them. My defense: trees are very sturdy and plastic is very fragile when frozen.
My brother was one of the thousands who was stuck on the road. He slept in his car as well until he was able to park in a Wal-Mart parking lot and walked home. He does not discuss his experiences much more than that.
Wow. Just wow. As a 49-year-old Atlanta native who dealt with this mayhem, you couldn't have nailed it any better. Completely accurate in every regard.
Preparedness for snow is really, really important. I live in a semi-rural town in Canada, just 30 minutes outside Ottawa, and no matter how large a snow storm is expected (2 inches to us is a normal snowfall, something like a foot would be considered a storm), its practically a guarantee that by the next day, most roads will have been cleared. Its something every level of government, from Federal to County, expects and has plenty of experience and planning not just every year, but every month. Whilst, for a place like Atlanta, its a one-and-done deal that would otherwise take too much money to prepare for a single event that may-or-may-not happen.
Fortunately, ever since Snowmageddon, the city pays to pre-salt the major roads, and residents are typically a lot more cautious about the risks of snow, working from home if they can. Schools are sometimes canceled ahead of time too. Those small things end up making a big difference. That, and not having the snow happen in the middle of the work day, before schools got let out. Snowmageddon was basically what happens when all 6 million Atlanta residents all suddenly get on the roads at the same time. Traffic is already a mess, but the timing of the snow turned it into a disaster.
Thank you for your reasoned assessment. With the exception of living three years in Colorado when I was young, I've always lived in the Deep South and Texas. I can't tell you the number of times snow has been forecast and we get a light dusting if we are lucky. City governments are in a lose-lose situation down here... if they spend money on rarely used snow equipment, they are being wasteful... until that once in a decade snow or ice storm shuts down the roads and then they should have magically produced the equipment.
I was a senior in high school when this happened. The same storm system dumped sleet and freezing rain as far south as where I live in the Florida panhandle. A quarter inch of sleet and freezing rain fell, and it shut everything down for about three days; they had to retrofit sand spreaders to dump trucks full of sand borrowed from the beach to try to make the roads even remotely driveable. The bridges all froze over, and people were sledding down them. I had a classmate end up on a local news report about it. Nonstop during the event I heard the reports coming out of Atlanta, and we were all glad that we had escaped the worst of it, but the three days I missed from school were the closest thing to snow days I ever saw while in grade school (we had hurricane/tropical storm days instead).
What surprises me is that this this was not as bad as the snow storms we got over Christmas 2010 and once again in January 2011. This storm in 2014 wasnt nearly as bad but its the one everyone talks about.
@@josephayers-irusota29652011 was very bad! The snow didn't melt for almost a week. It people stuck in the shady, hilly suburbs where the ice kept refreezing. It was impossible for people to make it out of their subdivisions
Who remembers the ice storm of 74? It rained and turned to sleet Around 5:00 that evening (I believe it was a Sunday) By the next morning everything had at least an inch of ice covering it. Tree limbs were touching the ground because of the weight of the ice and power was out all over the city because power lines were touching the ground also and power poles were breaking everywhere.
I was in 3rd grade when this happened. My dad picked me up from school but we didn't think to get my brother from middle school. He was stuck on the bus for a few hours I think until he got home. Later heard about people from other schools nearby sleeping in gyms and people just. stuck wherever they found themselves when it became too late. Flash forward to high school (we all still talk about it regularly) and someone brings up that the apush teacher had to help deliver his baby on the side of the road since they couldn't get to the hospital in time. Wild man. Wild.
My dad recorded an iconic video from this when Al Roker ranted on the Atlanta infrastructure. For me this was the first snow I remember as a kid and getting out early from school for the week.
I remember I was in the 4th grade, and because of the snow forecast our school was going to get out early. Luckily my mother was already there at the school and decided to take us home even earlier. Boy were we lucky. As soon as we got home we heard about the traffic piling up everywhere. My father works about a 10 minute drive away normally. It took him 3 hours to get home that day, and he even left the office early.
I was in Kennesaw Ga (ATL suburb) during Snowmageddon. I made it home safe, but so many I know left their cars and walked home. I lived near the interstate and the entire interstate looked like a parking lot on both sides. Wild stuff.
That's for clearing that up for the NORTHERNERS 😂🗣💯 It's the simple fact that our cities don't have the "snow infrastructure" that places like Detroit or Chicago appropriate billions for. We don't have snow plows. We don't salt our roads. So if you get 1" of ice on an unsalted road it's going to wreak complete havoc. I've spent countless winters in South Bend and you can't walk into a convenience store without crunching on salt everywhere you go. That's non existent in the South. So the rare moments where there is a substantial winter weather event, shit gets pretty crazy.
10:58 THANK YOU! FINALLY someone who has an audience said it! I'm so tired of people from Canada, Russia, and Scandinavia constantly commenting "1 inch of snow stopped you?! HAH! We're currently on month 2 of nonstop snow!" The concept of living in an area where snow travel just isn't a thing unless you get lucky is hard for them to grasp.
Only thing I'd reccomend for southern folks is to swap the summer tires for all seasons or winter tires when the time comes. Summers to winters makes a hell of a difference in winter weather. But in a situation like this storm, it wouldn't help at all unless they had studded wheels. 😞
@@sadBanker902 It's a lot more complicated than "politician bad." The weather report was weird. Nobody could really grasp what was in store since they hadn't had pattern like that. Ice storms are usually more predictable. Not here. Everyday Atlantans still went to work as if it was a regular day, schools still operated normally, and DOT didn't put in to have mutual aid at the ready, nor did anyone in a higher office recognize the danger either. You also have local, county, and state municipalities that all could have said something, but they couldn't understand the report, same as everyone else. The only people that even remotely understood it was NOAA, and they just gave out a "hey, expect a winter-y mix. Report's kinda odd" and that was that. That's a LOT of people who could have waved a red flag, but nobody did. They couldn't comprehend what they were about to be hammered by. Any single one of them could have said "nah, took risky" and gave the stay-home order. It wasn't until they were ankle deep in it that they all realized "oh, this weird radar image is actually kinda very bad." I can't agree with blaming any single person when there's so many active players on the field. It's like blaming a President for a decision that the accountant's assistant in Agricultural made. How is he supposed to know? How is ANYONE supposed to know?
It wasn't really THAT bad. I saw so many drivers who had no idea what they were doing. Like some dumbass stopped in the middle of an intersection, on a hill, on Middlebrook Pike and then was somehow shocked that his car wouldn't move. But yet, both of my roommates, one from Cali, the other from Athens, could both recognize how stupid this dude was. It's not an issue of knowing how to react to snow, it's using common sense.
As a Minnesotan who was here in Atlanta during snowmageddon, It was horrible. We had powder on top of glare ice on the roads at 10 PM. By the time I tried to leave my office, I could not get out of the Cumberland Mall area so I ended up sleeping in the office. When it comes down to man versus ice, ice wins
@@richardsteiner8992 Thanks for your Minnesotan-based perspective! Really was that bad then, huh? They also don't have the infrastructure down there, so it makes sense, although I've heard they went from 1 to 6 snowplows this year! Also, this is a funny day to be seeing this comment because I was on my way home from up north earlier, and a car on the northbound side of the freeway lost control. The crash fence (which was on my side of the freeway, for extra heart-stopping adrenaline :D) very probably saved my life today, so yes, ice always wins.
Green Bay native here, everything he said about that month is completely true. Packers fans will ALWAYS show up for a game. The colder, the better. That Irish cream hot cocoa keeps me going 😂
Great video! I feel like you’re one of the first people to talk about how the extreme car dependence of the south makes winter storms much worse there.
I remember these snowstorms from northwest Tennessee! We got out of school for about two weeks - made really good friends with my neighbor that was also in the HS band program. I have very fond memories of it :) Great video!!!! Especially great music, on top of your usual quality editing and writing.
I will never forget this day. I got stuck about 10 miles from my house with my wife and pregnant stepsister and her husband. We gave up around 6:30-7 in the night. Had to get out and walk home since we had no more gas to heat the car. Got to an extremely iced out bridge where it was clear that that was where the traffic stopped because it was completely empty after that point. But there was a guy that a had a truck with snow chains and 4 wheel and he was making trips back and forth picking up people and taking them to the nearest shelter which was a cvs with power. Luckily that just so happened to be a little less then a mile from where I lived. So we got the lift and kept walking and we eventually thank god made it to our destination around 1am. Mind you we were on the road and first got stuck around 10 am. Such a long snd hard day but man shit was crazy
Thank you for explaining the reasons why how unprepared southerners are for dealing with snowy/icy conditions. Northerners don't understand how you need opportunities to practice in dealing with them. Those seldom happen. They also have no concept of the fact that there are places in the south, esp along the Gulf coast, you seldom ever reach freezing. I grew up in one of those areas. But on the flip side, I figured out really quick how to shut them down. Ask then how well they handle 100+ degree summers. Most of them can't. Depending on where up north they are, 80-90 degrees is nearly unbearable.
Exactly. I worked at the AL State Capitol for a number of years. It was late May and a tour group from Michigan was about 10 minutes late for their tour. They apologized profusely, saying they had to trudge up a hill (actually a slight incline) from MLK's church and it was so hot they just couldn't go very fast. It was 78 degrees outside and we tried so hard not to laugh. They wouldn't have survived our state in August and early September. Conversely, though, I'd just about die having to live through a winter in the north... it wouldn't matter how many layers I could pile on!
I remember my father was stuck out in Cartersville about 9 miles from my home in Pauling during this storm. He luckily had someone drive by on a 4-wheeler and paid them $250 to drive him home. He said on the way it was like an apocalypse scene, cars scattered all down highway 61 on the shoulder, wrecked into each other, and stuck on the road. People walking for miles. We were worried he wasn’t going to make it home for the snow storm of the century (we were obsessed with snow as kids, dad loved it too), so here we are sledding down our hills and here comes my father, still in business attire, hanging on to the back of a 4 wheeler with 3 other people coming over the horizon 😂 man this was a super cool week for us. We were out of school for a whole week with this one
Rural northern Illinois here. Early January 2014 we got so much snow it was over our mailbox. I was in high school at the time and we had 2-3 days off extra from winter break. Couple days after we went back, for three days the high was -30 giving us another 2-3 days off
Coming here after the storm we just got! I was a sophomore in college when this happened. It took my one of my professors about 16 hours to get home to Atlanta! While we had a lot of people who stayed on campus, my university was mostly a commuter school at the time. The freshman and sophomore dorms became one big sleep over for a day or two.
I got lucky in that I didn’t drive that day. I got to see the traffic build while I was walking home, and I’m 90 percent sure I was responsible for a barber getting stuck in that hell. This situation made me pay closer attention to the weather than I did prior. Good video.
Oh man, I remember this. I was about 7 years old when this happened. I walked home from school with my mom, after she walked to our school to come get me and my brother. There was a semi truck that had slid on ice on one of the roads between my house and school, and it had blocked off traffic.
Good coverage, thanks. I also lived through this. You do mention it, but one of the reasons for this disaster was the southern prediction of the worst of it that got moved to cover ALL of Atlanta, and the northern suburbs... about 3 hours too late. All the trucks were south of town and by the time anyone realized what was happening, the traffic was too heavy and the roads too bad to get them moved. Then all commercial, government, and local schools/etc let out AT THE SAME TIME. In 100% dry conditions, this would have been impossible. My son was let out of school at 11:15. He arrived home, on foot, with a friend, at 10pm. He loved it though; was a great adventure for him. I made it home from work but ~5 of my coworkers spent the night at the office.
Thank you for bringing Snowmageddon back! I was at school this day until my dad picked me up at 6. We ended up helping people stranded in a school bus, then staying at my friends house. It was memorable day that’s for sure. Your concluding statement is accurate to how we thought the event would go. We weren’t going nowhere the next ice event that’s for certain…
I have a friend who spent 18 hours to drive 48 miles home that day. He left Atlanta at 1 pm. Had he left 2 hours earlier, he would have made it home in a couple hours at most.
This last snow/ice episode this past January 2024, I stayed home all week. Didn’t remotely consider going out. Birmingham, AL bought a fleet of Humvees after the Blizzard of 1993. Ten years later, the fleet was sold for scrap because they were never used again & they’d become scrap.
I'm an ATL native, but I was going to college in Boston when this storm hit. It was my second winter season in New England, and it broke historic records for amounts of snowfall (108.6 inches) during the season. It was ironic to see Atlanta get caught off guard by 2 inches of snow and a perfect set of circumstances while I literally couldn't open my apartment door because of snowfall/street plowing.
Literally this morning, my boss said there's nothing happening with the weather. So we should come in and within an hour, there would have been no way to get home. Now he is stuck there.
I will never forget this day. I was a delivery driver and was in Newnan making a delivery (about an hour southwest of downtown Atlanta) and on the way back to the store it started snowing and I could see the outbound traffic snarling up. I got back to the shop at about 11:30 and my boss made us wait until 1pm to leave. It took me until 6 pm to make what would normally be a 45 minute drive.
Thanks Nicole for clearing that up for the Northerners! It's not that us Southerners don't know how to drive in poor weather. It's the simple fact that our cities don't have the "snow infrastructure" that places like Detroit, Minnesota & Chicago appropriate billions for. We don't have snow plows. We don't salt our roads. So if you get .3" of ice on an unsalted road it's going to wreak complete havoc. I've spent countless winters in South Bend, IN being from up north you can't walk into a convenience store without crunching on salt everywhere you go. That's just non existent here in the South. So the rare moments where there is a substantial winter weather event, shit gets pretty crazy.
i respect your empathy for folks who were trapped in the snow storm in atlanta in specific and the deep south in general. and i love the way you contextualized how different factors contributed to the chaos of this event
We got snow in 2014 and 2017, but didn't get it again until this year. We got about 4 inches on 1/10/25 and have a 70% chance of 1-3 inches on 1/21/25. And meanwhile, in Alaska, it's been relatively warm this whole time.
I was five years old when this event occurred, all I have are faint memories of playing in the snow at my grandparents house, but nevertheless this was a very interesting event, great video!
I grew up in NY and used to giggle at Atlanta being shut down like that, and then I actually ended up moving there some years after the fact. On top of the awful reliance on interstates and vehicles, it should be noted that the city is sat right on the butt end of the Appalacians, so the elevation of the roads can vary pretty significantly. Sure doesn't help when the roads are caked in ice, it's no wonder things got so bad so fast.
What an experience to live through! Me and several colleagues were in a one bedroom apartment for several days. Thankfully a great friend lived in Dunwoody and she had all of us and her coworker there too. You were able to see the inherent goodness in people because total strangers were helping each other, including having them stay at their homes for several days. The stores like Target were housing people as well.
you should do a video over the mississippi flood of 1993, the main cause was a volcanic eruption causing severe rain. Another fact to mention was the man who charged with causing a catastrophe by breaking a flood wall during the 1993 flood, Love your videos !!
My mom was able to avoid getting stuck by parking her car in a lot and taking Marta back home when the snow started building up. Real appreciative of all the Marta Workers who helped people get home!
I remember this one so clearly as a Midwesterner who has Northern friends. It was a crazy situation honestly and its SO easy to rag on them for being taken out by such "little accumulation" but like, it was just the "perfect storm" (haha) that ended up in a horrible incident. Also you're so right, like im WAY more afraid of an ice storm than a snow storm as someone who's experienced both, but man.
I moved from Washington, D.C. to Chicago about 46 years ago. To this day, I continue to be amazed at how quickly the streets get cleared. Where I live, trucks are out salting the roads as soon as the snow starts to accumulate. We did have our version of Snowmageddon in 2011.
I was 18 years old when this happened working my first full time job as a night shift janitor at a private school. I got called around 11am saying we needed to come in and help the day shift with all of the things before the storm hit so night shift wouldn’t have to come in. I got there around noon and it was already chaotic. The parent pickup line was wrapped around the school and teachers were running around like a chicken with their head cut off 😂. I was able to leave around 5pm and luckily didn’t have to take the interstate home. I did lose power at some point that night, but turned out I was extremely lucky compared to the thousands of people stuck in their cars. Atlanta has definitely been overly cautious with winter storms after this event, and I don’t blame them!
I lived through this event. A couple things were left out of this video. The biggest one was local meteorologists disagreeing with the NWS. The main disagreement was that the snow would not stick because the ground would be too warm, despite the air temperature. When flakes started falling in the morning, nobody batted an eye. Then when people took their lunch break, they came outside to see about an inch on the ground! Everyone freaked out! The other main thing is that everything was still shut down for a day even after all of the ice melted. It took some time to clear enough abandoned cars to make the roads passable. The scariest realization from this event though was that the traffic nightmare could happen regardless of the weather. Any emergency that causes mass simultaneous evacuation of the city could do this.
For real. Already saw two pickup trucks BARRELING down Monroe 🙄 one straight up was drifting sideways and had absolutely no control. Made me rethink my walk reallll quick.
I drove for a hospital system at the time. Now I was raised in Ontario for years, and well acclimated to the snow. It snows every year. I ski’d to work. The trucks had snow tyres and chains. From the transportation director, if we couldn’t get in, they’d send out a bus for us. If you don’t have a good reason to be on the roads, don’t. Atlanta has a transit problem, many southern cities do, and couldn’t keep up with demand. Snowmageddon was awesome, one of the few good winters I can recall.
@anthonymarlow2269 watch out for the ice tomorrow. There's over an inch of water on the ground everywhere right now. And it's going to freeze over tonight. Stay safe
As in Atlanta native, I'm glad that somebody is finally talking about this in a way that is respectful and not just dismissing us as being weak when it comes to snowfall. We're not designed for it and there's a lot of other factors involved. I was very lucky, and I actually was in Manhattan for business during the entirety of snowmageddon. I did not return until after the thaw had already begun.
I was in elementary school when it hit. My bus was stuck at the top of my community for days. I wore sandals to school that day. Dad and I walked all the kids home that day.
The SSW Reminds me of the 2009/2010 or 2013 or 2018 Snowstorms in UK/ Europe, very cold, very snowy, and schools closed. 2018 was the worst imo with a deep low mixing with cold air and dump a lot of snow!
It just happened again now on 2025 January 21st . I had to walk 5.2 miles and left my work car at the QT, drove 3 hours from ATL to lawrenceville and then walked home
I remember the 2009 ice storm in Kentucky. I was young, so i dont remember everything, but i remember how many people were without power for DAYS and the ice was so thick on everything. I remember when we finally got power restored, you could hear people cheering from inside their homes. Ice storms are no joke, especially in the south where we aren't as prepared for them.
@@lunistylz587 Sure, but I don't think it's fair to expect a Southern state to invest in as much winter weather infrastructure as a Northern one. Not to mention, like he stated in this video, the people in southern states can't really practice for this type of weather when we only get it once in a blue moon. Just like I don't expect Montana to be as prepared as Kentucky when it comes to tornadoes, I don't think it makes much sense in this scenario to expect Kentucky to be as prepared for a winter storm as Montana might be :)
I was 17 living in Atlanta when this happened. The most snow I've ever seen in metro Atlanta being born in 97' Mom usually gets home around 5pm. She didn't get home until 10:30pm that day.
Ahhh I remember this like it was yesterday. I worked at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at the time and every hospital worker knows we don't get breaks no matter what. So they wanted us to sleep at the hospital but I left and went home in time to avoid all this chaos in my warm non icy condo, watching the ice and snow from my balcony😊 As someone who grew up in the blizzards and ice storms of Boston, MA it was troubling to see how unprepared southern states are for this kind of weather. Too many lives are put in danger.
As an Atlanta resident who lived through this disaster, this video is great! You called out all the major contributing factors. The timing of the snow, which usually doesn't stick in the middle of the day in Atlanta, the gradual changes in the forecasted area, which caused confusion due to not understanding the forecast, the lack of city equipment to clear roads, and the naturally horrible traffic that turned a routine snowstorm into one of the worst Atlanta disasters in recent decades. I'm also glad you pointed out how difficult it is to predict where the boundary between snow and rain is, since that has a HUGE effect on how much snow we get here in Atlanta. For years after 2014, most of the "snow" forecasts ended up being mostly rain, with almost no snow accumulation.
Excellent job calling out the similar snowstorm a few weeks before and the other storm after that were both completely unmemorable, because everyone stayed home instead of going to work/school those days. The real disaster wasn't the snow, it was the insane traffic, accidents, and the fact that it was routine week day where everyone was away from home when the storm hit. The fact that when schools closed in the middle of the day, everyone I knew suddenly left at the exact same time, turning our regularly bad traffic into a complete gridlock. The fact that busses normally service multiple schools in a single day, so one bus getting stuck ended up stranding multiple schools. It was like a bank run, except with Atlanta roads.
My experience was that I was sick with a minor cold, so I stayed home from college that day. I'm incredibly thankful that I stayed home. If I had gone to school I would have been stranded, since Marta quickly stopped operating once things got bad. I ended up helping a few other men push cars up the steep hill outside my home. One of the guys was a runner who called the road up the hill a "graveyard" of abandoned and stuck cars, and it was still early afternoon. I still remember the look of pity he had on one driver who was obviously struggling in a car not built for the icy hills. It felt good to help out, even if some of the people I helped never made it home that night. My mother drove for hours and hours in the snow, and finally parked her car in a Publix lot and walked the last 2 miles home. She arrived some time around 9pm. I had a lot of friends who ended up getting stuck somewhere, and a few friends who opened their homes to people stuck nearby. After I got too tired and cold to keep trying to get cars unstuck, I went back inside and made some hot chocolate. That week was a disaster for most people in Atlanta, but I had fun helping people and relaxing at home. It was a surreal experience to be sitting at home watching things unfold.
Anecdotally, no one really expected that much snowy, even if that's what the forecast had said that morning. I remember a few people being completely caught off guard by the snow, likely because they either remembered the warm Monday, or because they had only paid attention to the Monday forecast that said Atlanta wouldn't get any snow. The forecast changed pretty quickly, but no one seemed to notice or care. I think everyone latched onto the term "polar vortex" because it definitely felt like that storm came out of nowhere, and everyone was looking for explanations for why no one predicted the storm. It's incredibly ironic that the morning forecast was 100% accurate. It's just that no one paid attention. If schools had been canceled that morning due to the 80% chance of snow, I'm sure things would have gone down very differently.
None of the other snow storms have had the same effect as Snowmageddon, even though we've gotten more physical snow other times. Mostly because Atlanta now primitively salts the roads quite aggressively before any snow storm, people are a lot more willing to stay home "just in case", and schools now close if there's a good chance of snow. It does mean some makeup days at the end of the year, but I think it's worth it to avoid a similar disaster. It really was the perfect storm of the worst possible snow timing, bad city planning, bad communication, and everyone being collectively unprepared for snow.
Hey Alex! Thanks for sharing your firsthand experience of this event. It's incredible to see not only the number of people who were affected, but the number of people like you who helped. I'm glad Atlanta has taken steps to make sure a disaster like this doesn't happen again. Cheers!
Alex I JUST missed it. I was working at Delta at the time and they were being cagey about us leaving. We were finally released by 4. I immediately got on 75N because I lived in Buckhead at the time. But when I realized traffic was only barely moving, I took the Sylvan Rd. exit.
That's what saved me from getting stuck. My 20 minute drive to 26th St., took an hour and a half. But I made it home safely.
I'm so glad this doc actually mentioned the black ice. It was treacherous, and 2 inches of snow is definitely not that big of a deal. But black ice IS.
I was living in Roswell (Northern suburb of Atlanta) and working in Dunwoody at the time. I tried leaving work when everyone else did, I got about a block then turned around and parked and went back to work until after midnight. Just walking was an icy experience and it was easy to slip and fall.
I ended up trying again around midnight when Google showed traffic on Georgia 400 clearing a bit. It still took 5 hours to get home, and I ended up walking about a mile after my car wouldn't get up an icy hill.
I grew up with real winters and I'm sure I learned driving skills that helped me that night, but once the roads are covered with ice, driving skill doesn't matter unless you have studded tires. Which nobody in the area has.
As an ATLien I can agree with all accounts of what happened.
Now everyone goes to the store for essentials even at the hint of snow.
Thank God for Marta. I rode the train through all that mess. I could see the traffic backed up as the train went over I-20. It was a very very horrible day.
I avoided getting stuck in that foolishness by maybe an hour or so. As soon as the snowflakes started coming down heavily and I saw that all the traffic on the west side of Atlanta Metro was red on Google Maps, I told my coworkers "I'm headed home, I'll sign back on when I get there." I didn't wait for anyone to "let" me go.
Many people survived in Lahaina by following the same logic.
They saw the issues and didn't bother waiting for someone to tell them "Hey this is serious, evacuate or die".
Sadly too many people are the embodiment of a dumb protagonist in horror films despite how much they scream at their screens "DON'T OPEN THE DOOR"
Live in Minneapolis, MN with a job that can be done remotely and do the same. Even with proper salting and snow removal efforts, rush hour that's backed up when it's bone dry is going to be an absolute mess with a winter storm no matter how accustomed the drivers are. Benefits me cruising home with no traffic, but also benefits everyone else by making myself one fewer person out on the roads for all the people who can't duck out of work early.
Someone's safety minded!
@@Kraang this is severely victim blaming. You should be ashamed.
@@lowwastehighmelaninsome times the victim can hold some responsibility.
I think what also made this storm's impact so bad is that Atlanta is home to a LOT of people who grew up in the Snow belt. Many of those people (myself included) saw 2 inches of winter precipitation and completely disregarded it. Many of us failed to realize that the reason we were able to still go about business as usual was because our hometowns had crews, equipment, and other resources to mitigate the impact of winter weather.
And people that know how to drive. People that don't have summer tires on etc.
Towns and cities that have to deal with the snow all the time are not the difference maker. They attempt to keep the highways and the main roads clear first. And then it trickles down from there.
They constantly drive around on unplowed roads with multiple inches of snow on them.
They don't cancel life and stay inside until the plows come and clear all the residential roads.
I like to compare winter in the south to snow squalls, the difference between treated and untreated roads is astronomical
@@albundy06 Yup--when I worked overnights many years ago, got off work around 6AM to like 8 inches of unplowed snow on the residential roads the last couple miles and a car that has 5 inches of ground clearance. Made it home just fine--all about keeping the momentum up.
I'm from the (216) CLE, I definitely can see why those motorists got complacent since they're under the impression that ATL has a winter road plow system even though snow barely falls down there.
It really is all about the infrastructure setup and how well they can handle the event. Atlanta is pretty much the southern edge of where folks in gov't might *maybe* consider having something on standby for snow or ice, but accumulating snow is so rare that I believe the city errs on the side of not spending money on expensive equipment that may not get used for years. I've encountered northerners who laugh at FL's response to the winter storm there in late 1989 but the nearest winter equipment to FL is going to be in northern GA/AL or western SC. 500 miles away. A glaze of ice plus some snow with said winter storm was enough to close almost every bridge north of a line from Daytona to Cedar Key, as it should have been because there was no way to make those crossings safe until the ice melted naturally.
I will never forget it. Took an hour to drive 1 block. Parked in the Walmart Parking lot on Ashford Dunwoody.. Walked a mile to my wife's work, drove her car down the wrong side of the road, parked it in a church parking lot, then walked a half mile back to our apartment. So many colleagues spent the night on the hwy. We had a couple of colleagues stay in our apt, since it was so close and they could walk there. Everyone left their cars on the road, and people helped strangers. It was a terrible but also great day.
Similar story here. Wife was stuck on Highway 92 in Roswell and I had to borrow a neighbors Lexus GX with low range 4WD to get her. Roads were littered with stranded cars that made it difficult to dodge but I made it. Kids were stuck at a daycare that we ultimately walked about a mile to pick them up the next morning.
Good grief. I’m sorry for your loss
I was in 4th grade when this storm hit in BMH AL. A decade later I still vividly remember anxiously sitting in my classroom, watching dozens of my classmates leave before the calls for pickup slowed to a stop. I slowly realized that my parents wouldn’t make it to get my little sister and I anytime soon. My sister and I were retrieved when the school served us dinner, and we didn’t have to stay the night, thanks to an uncle and aunt who lived nearby and borrowed an off-road vehicle from a neighbor. I recall seeing so many cars abandoned/stuck, how frightened we were because of fallen trees/power lines and the steep country roads. The house was without power and was running on a generator, my sister and I slept in sleeping bags with our cousins in their beds. It wasn’t until two days later that my mother, a hospital worker, finally managed to return to us, and three days before my father, a police officer, could. Our little community rebounded quickly, though. Once the weather cleared and things settled, there was a big thank-you party for first responders and teachers at our school, some teachers endearingly made t-shirts to commemorate “surviving the snowmageddon.”
We in Texas still remember the winter of 2022 😅. Similar event occurred here too with our power outages. It wasn’t much about the snow but more about the temperatures. I remember my city dropped to -7°F because of the wind chill
Pfffffff. Typical Canadian day. Toughen up and tell your folks to learn to drive, they either can't drive for anything or never liked their kids
@@lazloperry5242come down here when there's a hurricane maple boy we'll see how them snow tires handle
I was in 6th grade when this happened at the time. I was stuck on a bus in a highway for a while. Then coincidentally one of my uncles was there, pulled over to the bus and picked me up and I headed home. It was fun and I made snowmen while me and my friend in 5th grade played Cod ghosts, fifa 14, and Rayman legends
@@juanalmzn2263 That’s a nice childhood memory
In Atlanta right now with a wintery mix of snow and ice projected for 48 hours from now. Oh lawd.
IT'S GO TIME BABY!!! 🤣
Yep. I can't wait.
do we call this one the snow rapture
😂😂😂
Same. Funny how it’s in my recommended when I don’t really watch weather based YT videos lol.
As a native NYer who lived through Snowmaggadeon in ATL, it wasn't functionally two inches of snow, but ultimately 2 inches of ice. I got off work in Midtown ATL at about 10pm and remember it being freezing out with all that hardening slush still on the road, and I knew right then it would be a disaster.
It was a perfect storm of unlikely events. Here's a quick rundown: yes it snowed two inches during the day, but the most important factor was that about 6pm it rained just a tiny bit (only about 10min of rain), but enough to turn the two inches of snow, to a thick slush. Then the Temps dropped at night, and all that slush froze to a 2in thick layer of ice. THAT was the issue.
What I meant by a perfect storm of unlikely events was that it took erratic Temps that went from, cold enough to snow, then slightly warm enough to rain, then back down to sub-freezing... all within a span of a few hours. That situation is highly atypical. I lived in NY for my 1st 20 years and have never seen that specific weather pattern before. On top of that, if it had rained even just 15min longer, it would have melted all the snow. Of course, Atlanta's inability to clear the 2 inches of snow was a huge issue, but to me, the issue was the fact that it all turned to ice. If it never froze and remained two inches of just snow, people would've still been able to drive to some degree, but two inches of solid ice is virtually impossible to drive on. Plus, plowing 2" of solid ice is much harder than plowing snow. When they did plow over the next several days, it tore up ALL the refectors on the dashed lines on every freeway in metro Atlanta. When didn't have reflectors back for many months, it took years before even half of them were replaced, and we still have a lot that are still not installed to this day.
Of course, we got the nation's ridicule about how a mere 2" of snow absolutely ground metro Atlanta to a halt, but again, it wasn't the initial 2" of snow, it was the formation of 2" of ice, and that's a HUGE difference... and everyone keeps missing the full context.
And the biggest problem was the hundreds of big trucks everywhere because once a few of them slid and blocked the freeways no one could go anywhere.
Lol I always say a southern snowball can kill you. Definitely not like the snow up north
Born and raised in Knoxville, TN, and yeah, that's how it goes down south. It's not the snow that's the problem it's the ice.
That changes everything. Two inches of ice is bad. Regardless of how hearty your people are.
As a Southerner (North Carolina), thank you for explaining why winter weather in the South can be a nightmare that people in other parts of the country don't seem to understand.
It's almost never snow. Usually first it rains (washing away the salt), then it sleets/snows, then it freezing rains on top or some combination of that in various layers..but almost always after it first rains and washes away the salt.
You don't get a lot of practice driving in it. The few times you do, the roads are never the same condition twice.
A lot of people don't understand how serious even an inch of snow can be if the infrastructure isn't prepared for it. When I was a kid living in Eastern Washington(a high desert that rarely sees precipitation), my city was regularly shut down for days at a time from mere inches of snow because of a combination of inexperienced drivers and a lack of salt/snowplows. Even rain could sometimes shut down the city because of lack of driving experience and roads that accumulate water because they're not built to shed water.
That’s called incompetence
If it had been just snow, there would not have been much of a problem, but when it all gets coated in ice...nobody can really drive on ice. There was about 1/2" of ice on top of the snow.
@@harryparsons2750 yeah like how its incompetent midwestern infrastructure isin't built to accommodate the hot floridian sun, its not supposed to snow in atlanta, thats why the infrastructure isint built for it
@@scpatl4nowI drove home on over 4 inches of solid ice before. You people just don't know how to drive.
That amount of snow and ice is absolutely nothing.
Im laughing at how much trouble that amount of snow caused. Its not infrastructure, its just having good tires and not driving like morrons.
I was down there making a delivery at the time and was stuck in their traffic. I had enough fuel to keep my truck running for days and wasn’t worried. I keep a case of MRE’s and water bottles under my bunk for emergencies. I let 2 families join me in my truck to keep warm. I let their kids play video games on my Xbox to keep them busy. I handed out some of the spare food and water to folks in nearby cars who had enough fuel to idle for the night. While it was a horror for some people, I saw it as a time of showing how compassionate a majority of the population is helping out one another. I saw other truckers like myself and people in their homes nearby helping. To the Jaxsons and the Broxsons ( no idea if I spelled that right) I hope y’all are doing well and was happy to have you in my little mobile paradise!
You're awesome, man and that's completely true. In the worst of times, you see the best of humanity. Completely off topic but it reminds me of another example. Earlier this year, a town near, had a EF-2 tornado hit and though it didn't cause a ton of damage in the town, it did destroy the roof of the home of one of the guys from my church, as well as damage his garage and barn. At first light, when they realize that he had been hit, the entire town rallied around him with the church Facebook at local groups calling all able and willing to get out there and help with the cleanup to one of the local roofers rebuilding his roof for him. It's these kinds of events that restore your faith in humanity. Just people helping people, with no ulterior motives. The way it should be.
Godspeed to you brother
God bless you man. It must’ve been so rewarding to help out those families. I can imagine just how close you all got ❤
That's a lovely story, thank you for sharing. I bet those kids look back on that as a happy memory because of you. Playing video games in a tractor-trailer during a snow storm would be so cool.
@ my son loves it! He's been on 100's of drives with me now during his summer breaks. He's actually helped me upgrade my gaming setup in the back with some of his ideas. I used to have a moderate 30" tv back there. He spotted that the windows in back cloth covers screws could be removed so I could fit a larger mount so now i've got a 50" tv back there!
I regret not ever liking up with any of those families socials to see how they're all doing but Its definitely a memory I'll never forget.
Especially since this past weekend I ended up needing my own rescue. This past weekend I was up in Wisconsin when the temps dropped to -20ish. My truck blew a coolant line inside the aircompressor (something I couldn't roadside fix myself).
Because I had no coolant I couldn't idle and my apu (aux power unit) wouldn't start. I was a good 50 miles from any place of note. A state trooper found me and my dog huddled in my bunk under the blankets while waiting for roadside assiastance to show up. He let me and my dog hang out in his cruiser for a hour while we waited for roadside to show up and fix the truck.
A perfect storm of shit breaking all at the same time.
Me and my dog wouldn;t have froze, I had a heated blanket. But damn those couple hours sucked. He made things a lot more comfortable
as someone who got affected by snowmageddon 2014, THANK YOU for talking about this!!! it was one of the most terrifying things that i’ve ever experienced but also sparked my interest in meteorology.
i vividly remember the shit that it caused. nothing is more terrifying than hearing the cracking of an old tree falling atop the house you’re in because of the ice, snow, and winds.
i did want to eat the ice though.
I made it through the Snowpocalypse of '21 in Texas. I sympathize. We are survivors!
Come to northern Maine where snow happens from October/November to May at times with temps occasionally colder than -40
Hope you didn't 🤢
@@shanelizotte6318 okay? cool? not what this comment was about or relating to though.
@@shanelizotte6318 You missed the entire point of the video. It's not about northern places used to getting snow and ice every year, for months out of the year.
It's about places much further south that don't get snow and ice on a yearly basis and not having the systems, infrastructure, or necessary equipment to handle that snow and ice.
I was hit hard by the second Snowmageddon (more commonly known as the Snowpocalypse) in NC--got let out early, went to Target to pick up groceries, snow came suddenly and we were stranded on the roads for 2 hours. I remember seeing cars in ditches, people walking home on the highway, etc. The famous meme from that day was taken in the area!
I honestly didn’t know the US had a Snowmageddon. In 2020 Newfoundland had a storm called that that made it on the news in Texas and I thought that was the only one
The flaming car on Glenwood Ave. A classic.
Was this around Charlotte?
nope@@guydreamr
@@Legority Well where then? No one's asking for your address, just the city or, if you prefer, the general region of NC (e.g. Mountains, Piedmont, or Coastal Plain). Would be interesting to know how snow affects different parts of NC.
Very cool to see you cover our area - but man that day was nuts. I worked at a grocery store less than 2 miles away. They begged us to come in so we walked to work to join the chaos, passing by cars jamming on icy hills and abandoning them until it was over. Worked the fuel center until we ran out of gas, then helped inside - people were grateful. Some folks slept in the store that night because they couldn't make it home (customers and associates). A friend who grew up in PA was able to drive and get us back home and we just had a snow party. His dad was stuck on the highway for about 36 hours. News reports of neighbors bringing food and water to people sleeping in their cars, offering shelter. Any risk of snow in the forecast and the city goes into lockdown mode now.
Getting to help others during these times is one of the best feelings ever. I had a bit of the same situation when hurricane Helene came a couple months ago and I’m sure people were very grateful for your help ❤
I had 3 friends who realized they would never make it home so they came to my house which was closer to downtown and we just hung out till the next day. It was insane how bad things got.
I lived in Columbus, GA during this. I grew up in Michigan so that snow was nothing to me, but it was magical seeing the kids in my apartment complex seeing snow and playing in it for the first time. ❤
damn now it doesen't even snow up here enough, there was only like a week or two this year where snow in detroit stuck
Yep that’s like 1 of the 4 times in 20 years we get snow done here in Columbus.
Im in Australia and never seen snow in my life! It is something I should do before I die
When I was really little, we moved from Louisiana to Colorado. Once the snow started, my sister and I were out in the snow playing every day. Eventually the other little kids on the block joined us. Their parents told my parents that their kids were sick of the snow and cold, but seeing my sister and I having so much fun made them rethink. We only lived there three years, but it was magical!
I live in Columbus now. I hate it lol any it's looking like this might happen again
Convenient how I a georgia native get this video on my hompage today of all days. Snowmageddon 2025 anyone?
Good luck. ❄️
Ga native here too and good grief, I hope not 😂
i swear google be stalking me...i never watch a 30min video about weather...anyway did yall play in the snow yesterday? we had fun
We’re much better and I hope more capable of handling these type of situations in 2025
@beststorytime4325 definitely made a snowman, had snowball fights. It was great bc this time I was prepared and not stuck in the wild like snowmageddan 😂 just stayed at home
I really love that you not only focused on the problems that lead to making this a huge mess, but also how people did their best in a bad situation. Getting together online, helping each other, etc. It's very easy to look what could have been done better, and that is a massively important thing to do, but it's just as important to see what was done RIGHT. Also, huge props to actively working against the "It's not a big deal for us, why should it be for them?" mindset.
Really great video as always!
As a Southerner, it was great to hear that people don't always understand how bad our roads can be down here.
I happen to live in Knoxville which got a whopping 9-10 inches of snow last month, our worst since the 93 Storm of the Century. Because we were immediately hit with one of these "Polar Vortex" cold snaps after, the snow stayed on the ground for a week and where it melted during the day in the sun, it immediately turned into ice at night. It's also a hilly town, and we have so little snow equipment the only roads they were able to keep plowed with the snow falling were I-40/75. Everywhere else you were on your own.
The only reason I ever saw a snowplow get to my house is that someone got a Bobcat from somewhere to plow, and that wasn't until 5 days after the snow fell. Knoxville was largely closed that entire week.
Today is 1/10/2025 and there’s about 4 inches of snow in Atlanta, GA, plus ice rain to come. On the west coast, Los Angeles, CA, is on fire. May the lord have mercy on us all.
Oh no! good luck. Stay safe!
1/12/2025 right now, snow still melting here in gwinnett. we got about 3 inches here
1/15 snow still melting in gwinnett. i heard it’s supposed to snow again next tuesday
It’s funny to me seeing people make a fuss over 4 inches of snow and some rain, you guys must have little to no plow trucks or road salt
@@zyzyx4157 we don’t and yes 4 inches isn’t that much but when we don’t have any way to deal with it we have to shut everything down 😭😭
I think a major part of why nobody was prepared was how warm it has been prior to this. I recall walking the neighbor’s dog in a tshirt and shorts the day prior.
Nobody took it seriously until the snow started sticking, which was around 1pm. I was in middle school at the time and remember how frantic it got when they tried to get buses for us, as we had the latest release time out of the K-12 program. One of my neighbors walked to pick up his son, and the school basically sent all the kids from the neighborhood walking home with him.
My parents ended up getting home at around 9pm. Several of my classmates had to spend the night at school! Nowadays, if I see snow in the forecast, I stay home.
now you get an idea of what it is like living in Indiana... one day its 60 and next day its -10 lol
@@Dratchev241 thanks sans undertale
Dude, it was typical warm rainy weather for the 3 days prior, and then I walked out the factory working mornings, s
I had been in for 12 hrs at 6 pm, and everything was frozen it was wild
Prior to the storm I lived in New England for 37 years. I lived in a town of 7000 people that had seven snowplows. I moved to Atlanta and County of 1 million people that had seven snowplows. It wasn’t a matter of being unprepared as much as it was there isn’t a need for that many snowplows per capita in Atlanta
Ooh something I actually have a personal anecdote on. I was 10 when this happened, and it was pretty much exactly as you described. I didn't wind up staying overnight but it took my mother about 7 hours to get from the house to the school, and another 4 for us to get back. The highways were a complete loss, if you went on them at any point you were cooked, the surface roads were bad, but overcomeably bad.
The only thing you undershoot how rare snow is in Atlanta, we haven't gotten 2 inches since snowmageddon, snow accumulation is a once every few years kind of thing, not once or twice a year.
And don't forget the hills. If Atlanta was flat like most northern cities it wouldn't have been a problem.
I remember it happening a lot more often before this
I noticed that as well, I was like “yeah we definitely don’t get snow once or twice a year”
I was in college at GSU when this happened. They shut down classes at 12:00pm and I was minutes away from getting on the interstate when my friends called me to ask them to get them a ride to their dorms from school. I turned around got them, took them back and then spent the next 6 hours without moving a mile. I hear on the radio that the i-75 North was shut down, so I turned around and was stuck in my friends dorm for 2 days. Had I actually got on the I-75 North when i got out of school, I would have been stuck out there for over 24 hours. I am so happy you covered this! This was such a massive moment for people we lived through it-not to be dramatic, but this was absolutely INSANE.
You’re definitely not being dramatic. It was incredibly atypical and very impacting
It’s a great day when weatherbox uploads!
bro i love weatherbox so much this channel is amazing its like a treat you get a couple days per month
Ikr!@@dadogwitdabignose
So, as a resident of Oconee County, GA, I remember this vividly. Back in 2011 a similar-ish situation happened, albeit snowfall accumulation was much higher during that event. The 2011 Snowpocalpyse was especially confusing since Nathan Deal was inaugurated into office the day after the first major round of snow and sleet came by. I remember getting on my bus in the 5th grade and seeing the snow finally falling around noon. The snow wasn't hard like it normally was, it was fluffy.
I remember the images of Atlanta being frozen over and essentially paralyzed and was more glad than ever to live in the middle of nowhere. Great job covering it as well! This was quite the trip from memory lane I'll say that for sure.
Hey! I was curious as to what your experience of 2011/2014 was like. That detail about the snow being fluffy makes a lot of sense, and something I wouldn't think about in Ohio--most of our lake effect snow is fluffly, giant flakes. Glad you made it out of both events with minimal damage!
@@weatherboxstudios I remember I lost power briefly during the event in 2011, but given I got close to 4-6in of snow/sleet as I was close to Athens. The only reason I remember the power going out during the 2011 event was because that Monday afternoon I was playing Sonic & Knuckles on my mom's PC that day and I got to Sandopolis Zone, went to go outside for a bit, only to go back inside to see the power was off and my progress had been lost. If anything that 2011 event was somehow more insane given that I still remember there being snow on the ground a week or so after the Arctic blast began. (I was thinking it was that Monday but I forgot I had that day of school off due to MLK Holiday. That Tuesday was when I went back, and it was delayed due to black ice because the snow kept melting and refreezing.).
In my neck of the woods, the 2011 event was the worst (Given it's the most snow the Athens, GA Area has seen in forever, that makes sense.) I also vividly remember the Early February Winter/Ice Storm being a bigger threat and more significant in East-central and some parts of Northeast Georgia. First time I remember the Oconee County Police department have a press conference on a winter event. I never had seen that much ice than I did during the February event. Any sort of water that was running just froze, straight up. I remember picking up like 2in thick icicles from the bottom of my Dad's F150 it was insane! Also had that week off after the Monday due to the threat of the ice refreezing. I was one of the people competing in the regional 4H competition and barely anybody showed up that Saturday because of that winter storm knocking out power for most of East-Central Georgia. (Then to go home and get hit by the earthquake that night was definitely an experience.
Winter weather here is rare, but from my standpoint, when it DOES happen here near Athens, it's often significant and fascinating from a meteorological perspective. Haven't had anything REAL big in my neck of the woods since early 2018, but there were a few snow events in 2022 that I remember going through that January.
TLDR: Winter Storms down here are interesting.
Welcome to office, Mr. Governor, here's your first test immediately! Lol.
I'd been living in Cobb County, GA when the snowstorms in 2011 and 2014 happened. In 2011's snowstorm my sisters and I played in the snow and even made a few snowmen along with my best friend and her sister since we'd been next-door neighbors, and in 2014 that was a bit more wild. My mom worked at the elementary school that my sisters and I'd attended and my dad worked close to Atlanta, so while my youngest sister could get home with my mom, my younger sister and I (along with my best friend and her sister as well) were all stuck at the middle school we were attending. We got lucky with a bus arriving 10 minutes after our school usually ended for the day, and it happened to be routing to our neighborhood with an extra stop that day for a neighborhood along the way. I think it took between half an hour to an hour for us all to get home, but we were all definitely enjoying the snow the entire ride and walk to our houses. While we basically waited for the snow to get cleared and melt away my dad basically let us use two of his cement-mixing tubs as makeshift sleds, which I, uh... broke both of them. My defense: trees are very sturdy and plastic is very fragile when frozen.
I live in Morgan but I was like 5 when it happened so I don't remember lol
My brother was one of the thousands who was stuck on the road. He slept in his car as well until he was able to park in a Wal-Mart parking lot and walked home. He does not discuss his experiences much more than that.
Who’s here because it’s about to snow in Atlanta again tomorrow 😂
Looks like we're having a snowmeggedon 2.0
@@lun4ever 🤣
Well since snowmaggedon they actually cancel school at any hint so snow so this doesn't happen again.
Me 👋🏽 My friend just sent me a video from Dallas, Texas. It was snowing like crazy. I am preparing for what is coming for us.
All of us
Wow. Just wow. As a 49-year-old Atlanta native who dealt with this mayhem, you couldn't have nailed it any better. Completely accurate in every regard.
Wow what a coincidence that this video showed up right before a snowstorm while I’m in ATL
Preparedness for snow is really, really important. I live in a semi-rural town in Canada, just 30 minutes outside Ottawa, and no matter how large a snow storm is expected (2 inches to us is a normal snowfall, something like a foot would be considered a storm), its practically a guarantee that by the next day, most roads will have been cleared. Its something every level of government, from Federal to County, expects and has plenty of experience and planning not just every year, but every month. Whilst, for a place like Atlanta, its a one-and-done deal that would otherwise take too much money to prepare for a single event that may-or-may-not happen.
Bingo!
Aside, Texas has known to send public snow removal workers and city managers up north for training.
Fortunately, ever since Snowmageddon, the city pays to pre-salt the major roads, and residents are typically a lot more cautious about the risks of snow, working from home if they can. Schools are sometimes canceled ahead of time too. Those small things end up making a big difference. That, and not having the snow happen in the middle of the work day, before schools got let out. Snowmageddon was basically what happens when all 6 million Atlanta residents all suddenly get on the roads at the same time. Traffic is already a mess, but the timing of the snow turned it into a disaster.
Thank you for your reasoned assessment. With the exception of living three years in Colorado when I was young, I've always lived in the Deep South and Texas. I can't tell you the number of times snow has been forecast and we get a light dusting if we are lucky. City governments are in a lose-lose situation down here... if they spend money on rarely used snow equipment, they are being wasteful... until that once in a decade snow or ice storm shuts down the roads and then they should have magically produced the equipment.
who's ready for snowmageddon 2025??
we running fort all day for snowmageddon🔥🗣
I believe Buford Calloway might make a return
Hell yeah!!!!
Me
I bought ALL the Bread and Milk...😂😂😂
why is this popping up right before we get snow again 😩😩😭
True
On god
Al Gore rhythm.
I was a senior in high school when this happened. The same storm system dumped sleet and freezing rain as far south as where I live in the Florida panhandle. A quarter inch of sleet and freezing rain fell, and it shut everything down for about three days; they had to retrofit sand spreaders to dump trucks full of sand borrowed from the beach to try to make the roads even remotely driveable. The bridges all froze over, and people were sledding down them. I had a classmate end up on a local news report about it. Nonstop during the event I heard the reports coming out of Atlanta, and we were all glad that we had escaped the worst of it, but the three days I missed from school were the closest thing to snow days I ever saw while in grade school (we had hurricane/tropical storm days instead).
What surprises me is that this this was not as bad as the snow storms we got over Christmas 2010 and once again in January 2011. This storm in 2014 wasnt nearly as bad but its the one everyone talks about.
Agreed. 2011 was way worse, but it also mostly occurred overnight, thus no traffic jam. The snow and ice stuck around far longer, though.
agreed. Xmas 2010 was my first and only white christmas. The piedmont of NC got at least a foot on xmas, and That January had 2 more big storms
@@josephayers-irusota29652011 was very bad! The snow didn't melt for almost a week. It people stuck in the shady, hilly suburbs where the ice kept refreezing. It was impossible for people to make it out of their subdivisions
Who remembers the ice storm of 74? It rained and turned to sleet Around 5:00 that evening (I believe it was a Sunday) By the next morning everything had at least an inch of ice covering it. Tree limbs were touching the ground because of the weight of the ice and power was out all over the city because power lines were touching the ground also and power poles were breaking everywhere.
I was in 3rd grade when this happened. My dad picked me up from school but we didn't think to get my brother from middle school. He was stuck on the bus for a few hours I think until he got home. Later heard about people from other schools nearby sleeping in gyms and people just. stuck wherever they found themselves when it became too late.
Flash forward to high school (we all still talk about it regularly) and someone brings up that the apush teacher had to help deliver his baby on the side of the road since they couldn't get to the hospital in time.
Wild man. Wild.
My dad recorded an iconic video from this when Al Roker ranted on the Atlanta infrastructure. For me this was the first snow I remember as a kid and getting out early from school for the week.
It wasnt iconic.
The first snow I remember too as hs sophomore
I remember I was in the 4th grade, and because of the snow forecast our school was going to get out early. Luckily my mother was already there at the school and decided to take us home even earlier. Boy were we lucky. As soon as we got home we heard about the traffic piling up everywhere.
My father works about a 10 minute drive away normally. It took him 3 hours to get home that day, and he even left the office early.
I was in Kennesaw Ga (ATL suburb) during Snowmageddon. I made it home safe, but so many I know left their cars and walked home. I lived near the interstate and the entire interstate looked like a parking lot on both sides. Wild stuff.
Your videos have incredible production value and always look stunningly well made! Great work as always!
Thank you for sticking around!
Apt timing for this to be recommended
Got served this video as they are predicting 7 inches in 2025
I feel like I’m doing research
Are you in Texas or ATL?? My family is getting ready for a repeat of 2021s TXs snow apocalypse.
Showing 6-12" in my area otp ne
SNOW did not shut down Atlanta; two inches of ICE - that arrived in the middle of the afternoon - did..
That's for clearing that up for the NORTHERNERS 😂🗣💯 It's the simple fact that our cities don't have the "snow infrastructure" that places like Detroit or Chicago appropriate billions for. We don't have snow plows. We don't salt our roads. So if you get 1" of ice on an unsalted road it's going to wreak complete havoc. I've spent countless winters in South Bend and you can't walk into a convenience store without crunching on salt everywhere you go. That's non existent in the South. So the rare moments where there is a substantial winter weather event, shit gets pretty crazy.
10:58 THANK YOU! FINALLY someone who has an audience said it! I'm so tired of people from Canada, Russia, and Scandinavia constantly commenting "1 inch of snow stopped you?! HAH! We're currently on month 2 of nonstop snow!" The concept of living in an area where snow travel just isn't a thing unless you get lucky is hard for them to grasp.
Only thing I'd reccomend for southern folks is to swap the summer tires for all seasons or winter tires when the time comes. Summers to winters makes a hell of a difference in winter weather. But in a situation like this storm, it wouldn't help at all unless they had studded wheels. 😞
Maybe start demanding that your politicians be less incompetent and actually prepare for events like this even if they are rare.
@@sadBanker902 It's a lot more complicated than "politician bad." The weather report was weird. Nobody could really grasp what was in store since they hadn't had pattern like that. Ice storms are usually more predictable. Not here. Everyday Atlantans still went to work as if it was a regular day, schools still operated normally, and DOT didn't put in to have mutual aid at the ready, nor did anyone in a higher office recognize the danger either. You also have local, county, and state municipalities that all could have said something, but they couldn't understand the report, same as everyone else. The only people that even remotely understood it was NOAA, and they just gave out a "hey, expect a winter-y mix. Report's kinda odd" and that was that.
That's a LOT of people who could have waved a red flag, but nobody did. They couldn't comprehend what they were about to be hammered by. Any single one of them could have said "nah, took risky" and gave the stay-home order. It wasn't until they were ankle deep in it that they all realized "oh, this weird radar image is actually kinda very bad."
I can't agree with blaming any single person when there's so many active players on the field. It's like blaming a President for a decision that the accountant's assistant in Agricultural made. How is he supposed to know? How is ANYONE supposed to know?
@@sadBanker902Great idea, spend tons of money on equipment that will rarely get used!
It wasn't really THAT bad. I saw so many drivers who had no idea what they were doing. Like some dumbass stopped in the middle of an intersection, on a hill, on Middlebrook Pike and then was somehow shocked that his car wouldn't move. But yet, both of my roommates, one from Cali, the other from Athens, could both recognize how stupid this dude was. It's not an issue of knowing how to react to snow, it's using common sense.
As a Minnesotan whos coworkers are almost entirely from Atlanta, I have the distinguished privilege of hearing about Snowmageddon every winter :)
As a Minnesotan who was here in Atlanta during snowmageddon, It was horrible. We had powder on top of glare ice on the roads at 10 PM. By the time I tried to leave my office, I could not get out of the Cumberland Mall area so I ended up sleeping in the office. When it comes down to man versus ice, ice wins
@@richardsteiner8992 Thanks for your Minnesotan-based perspective! Really was that bad then, huh? They also don't have the infrastructure down there, so it makes sense, although I've heard they went from 1 to 6 snowplows this year! Also, this is a funny day to be seeing this comment because I was on my way home from up north earlier, and a car on the northbound side of the freeway lost control. The crash fence (which was on my side of the freeway, for extra heart-stopping adrenaline :D) very probably saved my life today, so yes, ice always wins.
Green Bay native here, everything he said about that month is completely true. Packers fans will ALWAYS show up for a game. The colder, the better. That Irish cream hot cocoa keeps me going 😂
Great video! I feel like you’re one of the first people to talk about how the extreme car dependence of the south makes winter storms much worse there.
I remember these snowstorms from northwest Tennessee! We got out of school for about two weeks - made really good friends with my neighbor that was also in the HS band program. I have very fond memories of it :)
Great video!!!! Especially great music, on top of your usual quality editing and writing.
I will never forget this day. I got stuck about 10 miles from my house with my wife and pregnant stepsister and her husband. We gave up around 6:30-7 in the night. Had to get out and walk home since we had no more gas to heat the car. Got to an extremely iced out bridge where it was clear that that was where the traffic stopped because it was completely empty after that point. But there was a guy that a had a truck with snow chains and 4 wheel and he was making trips back and forth picking up people and taking them to the nearest shelter which was a cvs with power. Luckily that just so happened to be a little less then a mile from where I lived. So we got the lift and kept walking and we eventually thank god made it to our destination around 1am. Mind you we were on the road and first got stuck around 10 am. Such a long snd hard day but man shit was crazy
Thank you for explaining the reasons why how unprepared southerners are for dealing with snowy/icy conditions. Northerners don't understand how you need opportunities to practice in dealing with them. Those seldom happen. They also have no concept of the fact that there are places in the south, esp along the Gulf coast, you seldom ever reach freezing. I grew up in one of those areas.
But on the flip side, I figured out really quick how to shut them down. Ask then how well they handle 100+ degree summers. Most of them can't. Depending on where up north they are, 80-90 degrees is nearly unbearable.
Exactly. I worked at the AL State Capitol for a number of years. It was late May and a tour group from Michigan was about 10 minutes late for their tour. They apologized profusely, saying they had to trudge up a hill (actually a slight incline) from MLK's church and it was so hot they just couldn't go very fast. It was 78 degrees outside and we tried so hard not to laugh. They wouldn't have survived our state in August and early September. Conversely, though, I'd just about die having to live through a winter in the north... it wouldn't matter how many layers I could pile on!
The North can't really deal with the hot temps and conversely the South can't deal with the cold
Crazy how I’m seeing this now as a snow storm is hitting Atlanta again
I remember my father was stuck out in Cartersville about 9 miles from my home in Pauling during this storm. He luckily had someone drive by on a 4-wheeler and paid them $250 to drive him home. He said on the way it was like an apocalypse scene, cars scattered all down highway 61 on the shoulder, wrecked into each other, and stuck on the road. People walking for miles. We were worried he wasn’t going to make it home for the snow storm of the century (we were obsessed with snow as kids, dad loved it too), so here we are sledding down our hills and here comes my father, still in business attire, hanging on to the back of a 4 wheeler with 3 other people coming over the horizon 😂 man this was a super cool week for us. We were out of school for a whole week with this one
I teared up at the father who walked 6 miles to pick up his kid😭 true love right there.
Rural northern Illinois here. Early January 2014 we got so much snow it was over our mailbox. I was in high school at the time and we had 2-3 days off extra from winter break. Couple days after we went back, for three days the high was -30 giving us another 2-3 days off
Coming here after the storm we just got! I was a sophomore in college when this happened. It took my one of my professors about 16 hours to get home to Atlanta! While we had a lot of people who stayed on campus, my university was mostly a commuter school at the time. The freshman and sophomore dorms became one big sleep over for a day or two.
Thank you for unlocking a core memory
I got lucky in that I didn’t drive that day. I got to see the traffic build while I was walking home, and I’m 90 percent sure I was responsible for a barber getting stuck in that hell. This situation made me pay closer attention to the weather than I did prior. Good video.
Oh man, I remember this. I was about 7 years old when this happened. I walked home from school with my mom, after she walked to our school to come get me and my brother. There was a semi truck that had slid on ice on one of the roads between my house and school, and it had blocked off traffic.
Good coverage, thanks. I also lived through this. You do mention it, but one of the reasons for this disaster was the southern prediction of the worst of it that got moved to cover ALL of Atlanta, and the northern suburbs... about 3 hours too late. All the trucks were south of town and by the time anyone realized what was happening, the traffic was too heavy and the roads too bad to get them moved.
Then all commercial, government, and local schools/etc let out AT THE SAME TIME. In 100% dry conditions, this would have been impossible.
My son was let out of school at 11:15. He arrived home, on foot, with a friend, at 10pm. He loved it though; was a great adventure for him. I made it home from work but ~5 of my coworkers spent the night at the office.
I lived north of Atlanta at the time and had to park at a laundry mat to walk home from school. It was a wild time.
Amazing informative video, thank you for this! I learned a lot and was entertained!
We’re supposed to get 1-3in of snow tomorrow that’s why I’m here!
Could be 6 depending on where you're at
@@TheWreck-faf yeah but the part of ATL I’m in is getting 1-3 or lower
@BineBeamNG-rd5fv stay warm tomorrow hopefully we don't get a huge amount of freezing rain
@@TheWreck-faf yeah and more snow
I've got 3" in Riverdale
Looks like we might get another one of these Friday morning
Fr fr clear the shelves
@@anthonymarlow2269It’s already happening 😂😂
@@Just_Visiting316 really?
How's it going down there
@ my 4x4 truck helped out a ton! About four inches and now it’s sleeting. Glad I’m staying where I’m at!
Thank you for bringing Snowmageddon back! I was at school this day until my dad picked me up at 6. We ended up helping people stranded in a school bus, then staying at my friends house. It was memorable day that’s for sure. Your concluding statement is accurate to how we thought the event would go. We weren’t going nowhere the next ice event that’s for certain…
I have a friend who spent 18 hours to drive 48 miles home that day. He left Atlanta at 1 pm. Had he left 2 hours earlier, he would have made it home in a couple hours at most.
This last snow/ice episode this past January 2024, I stayed home all week. Didn’t remotely consider going out. Birmingham, AL bought a fleet of Humvees after the Blizzard of 1993. Ten years later, the fleet was sold for scrap because they were never used again & they’d become scrap.
I'm an ATL native, but I was going to college in Boston when this storm hit. It was my second winter season in New England, and it broke historic records for amounts of snowfall (108.6 inches) during the season. It was ironic to see Atlanta get caught off guard by 2 inches of snow and a perfect set of circumstances while I literally couldn't open my apartment door because of snowfall/street plowing.
Literally this morning, my boss said there's nothing happening with the weather. So we should come in and within an hour, there would have been no way to get home. Now he is stuck there.
I will never forget this day. I was a delivery driver and was in Newnan making a delivery (about an hour southwest of downtown Atlanta) and on the way back to the store it started snowing and I could see the outbound traffic snarling up. I got back to the shop at about 11:30 and my boss made us wait until 1pm to leave. It took me until 6 pm to make what would normally be a 45 minute drive.
In Ga we don’t fear snow, we fear black ice
I’m from Kentucky and fear both
Thanks Nicole for clearing that up for the Northerners! It's not that us Southerners don't know how to drive in poor weather. It's the simple fact that our cities don't have the "snow infrastructure" that places like Detroit, Minnesota & Chicago appropriate billions for. We don't have snow plows. We don't salt our roads. So if you get .3" of ice on an unsalted road it's going to wreak complete havoc. I've spent countless winters in South Bend, IN being from up north you can't walk into a convenience store without crunching on salt everywhere you go. That's just non existent here in the South. So the rare moments where there is a substantial winter weather event, shit gets pretty crazy.
As a synth musician and enthusiast, I love the "synth model" display sequence at the very beginning of this great video. Nice touch!
Why did this pop up on my fyp right before a atl snow storm 💀
Fr
On god
@@vedgerna3366Your picture😂😂
i respect your empathy for folks who were trapped in the snow storm in atlanta in specific and the deep south in general. and i love the way you contextualized how different factors contributed to the chaos of this event
I'm in Atlanta an we are having a wintry mix
We got snow in 2014 and 2017, but didn't get it again until this year. We got about 4 inches on 1/10/25 and have a 70% chance of 1-3 inches on 1/21/25. And meanwhile, in Alaska, it's been relatively warm this whole time.
Very well done, I was not really aware about this event (writing from Quebec, Canada).
I was five years old when this event occurred, all I have are faint memories of playing in the snow at my grandparents house, but nevertheless this was a very interesting event, great video!
Was also 5 when it happened, I have memories of building a (very bad) snowman
I grew up in NY and used to giggle at Atlanta being shut down like that, and then I actually ended up moving there some years after the fact. On top of the awful reliance on interstates and vehicles, it should be noted that the city is sat right on the butt end of the Appalacians, so the elevation of the roads can vary pretty significantly. Sure doesn't help when the roads are caked in ice, it's no wonder things got so bad so fast.
The Piedmont definitely contributed. Ice on Six Flags hill made I-20W utterly impassable by late afternoon.
What an experience to live through! Me and several colleagues were in a one bedroom apartment for several days. Thankfully a great friend lived in Dunwoody and she had all of us and her coworker there too. You were able to see the inherent goodness in people because total strangers were helping each other, including having them stay at their homes for several days. The stores like Target were housing people as well.
you should do a video over the mississippi flood of 1993, the main cause was a volcanic eruption causing severe rain. Another fact to mention was the man who charged with causing a catastrophe by breaking a flood wall during the 1993 flood, Love your videos !!
I remember that flood. It turned our ditches into mini pools. I was only 7 so I could go swimming in them!
My mom was able to avoid getting stuck by parking her car in a lot and taking Marta back home when the snow started building up. Real appreciative of all the Marta Workers who helped people get home!
I remember this one so clearly as a Midwesterner who has Northern friends. It was a crazy situation honestly and its SO easy to rag on them for being taken out by such "little accumulation" but like, it was just the "perfect storm" (haha) that ended up in a horrible incident.
Also you're so right, like im WAY more afraid of an ice storm than a snow storm as someone who's experienced both, but man.
I moved from Washington, D.C. to Chicago about 46 years ago. To this day, I continue to be amazed at how quickly the streets get cleared. Where I live, trucks are out salting the roads as soon as the snow starts to accumulate. We did have our version of Snowmageddon in 2011.
Babe wake up. Weatherbox dropped a new video.
I was 18 years old when this happened working my first full time job as a night shift janitor at a private school. I got called around 11am saying we needed to come in and help the day shift with all of the things before the storm hit so night shift wouldn’t have to come in. I got there around noon and it was already chaotic. The parent pickup line was wrapped around the school and teachers were running around like a chicken with their head cut off 😂. I was able to leave around 5pm and luckily didn’t have to take the interstate home. I did lose power at some point that night, but turned out I was extremely lucky compared to the thousands of people stuck in their cars. Atlanta has definitely been overly cautious with winter storms after this event, and I don’t blame them!
Yeah that just goes to show it can snow in the South too which Northerners deny.
So fitting to get this in my recommended
This was so interesting and very well put together, thanks for that, as an Atlantian who lived here during this event, u hit the nail on the head 👏🏽
This video aged well
I lived through this event. A couple things were left out of this video.
The biggest one was local meteorologists disagreeing with the NWS. The main disagreement was that the snow would not stick because the ground would be too warm, despite the air temperature. When flakes started falling in the morning, nobody batted an eye. Then when people took their lunch break, they came outside to see about an inch on the ground! Everyone freaked out!
The other main thing is that everything was still shut down for a day even after all of the ice melted. It took some time to clear enough abandoned cars to make the roads passable.
The scariest realization from this event though was that the traffic nightmare could happen regardless of the weather. Any emergency that causes mass simultaneous evacuation of the city could do this.
WE BACK
For real. Already saw two pickup trucks BARRELING down Monroe 🙄 one straight up was drifting sideways and had absolutely no control. Made me rethink my walk reallll quick.
@@VeroniquekkyHell naww I’m staying inside!
@@Veroniquekky It's more slippery now then it was when the snow was coming down!
I drove for a hospital system at the time. Now I was raised in Ontario for years, and well acclimated to the snow. It snows every year. I ski’d to work. The trucks had snow tyres and chains. From the transportation director, if we couldn’t get in, they’d send out a bus for us. If you don’t have a good reason to be on the roads, don’t. Atlanta has a transit problem, many southern cities do, and couldn’t keep up with demand.
Snowmageddon was awesome, one of the few good winters I can recall.
I cant wait for part 2 tomorrow!!!!!!!!!
Alot of people out here thinking it ain't gonna do nothing okay let's see
@anthonymarlow2269 yup definitely nothing with my 5 inches of snow in my backyard lol
@@nickloughner7512 yeah it hit pretty hard
@@anthonymarlow2269 it's so beautiful it's wonderful 🥺🥺🥺
@anthonymarlow2269 watch out for the ice tomorrow. There's over an inch of water on the ground everywhere right now. And it's going to freeze over tonight. Stay safe
As in Atlanta native, I'm glad that somebody is finally talking about this in a way that is respectful and not just dismissing us as being weak when it comes to snowfall. We're not designed for it and there's a lot of other factors involved.
I was very lucky, and I actually was in Manhattan for business during the entirety of snowmageddon. I did not return until after the thaw had already begun.
Who came here because of recent events?
I was in elementary school when it hit. My bus was stuck at the top of my community for days. I wore sandals to school that day.
Dad and I walked all the kids home that day.
The SSW Reminds me of the 2009/2010 or 2013 or 2018 Snowstorms in UK/ Europe, very cold, very snowy, and schools closed. 2018 was the worst imo with a deep low mixing with cold air and dump a lot of snow!
Although places like East Germany have the infrastructure to deal with snow because it is a much more regular occurrence.
It just happened again now on 2025 January 21st . I had to walk 5.2 miles and left my work car at the QT, drove 3 hours from ATL to lawrenceville and then walked home
I wonder if it's going to be like this Friday morning lol
They shut the schools down at any hint of snow these days to make sure 2014 doesn't happen again
I remember the 2009 ice storm in Kentucky. I was young, so i dont remember everything, but i remember how many people were without power for DAYS and the ice was so thick on everything. I remember when we finally got power restored, you could hear people cheering from inside their homes. Ice storms are no joke, especially in the south where we aren't as prepared for them.
You guys just need better winter infrastructure, this year in January it dropped to -44 degrees here in Montana and power didn’t go out at all.
@@lunistylz587 Sure, but I don't think it's fair to expect a Southern state to invest in as much winter weather infrastructure as a Northern one. Not to mention, like he stated in this video, the people in southern states can't really practice for this type of weather when we only get it once in a blue moon. Just like I don't expect Montana to be as prepared as Kentucky when it comes to tornadoes, I don't think it makes much sense in this scenario to expect Kentucky to be as prepared for a winter storm as Montana might be :)
As someone born and raised in Atlanta, WE DESERVED THIS DOC. 😂
I was 17 living in Atlanta when this happened. The most snow I've ever seen in metro Atlanta being born in 97'
Mom usually gets home around 5pm. She didn't get home until 10:30pm that day.
I think we might be about to get this same thing again tomorrow.
Get prepared don't be stuck
@anthonymarlow2269 Staying home!
Ahhh I remember this like it was yesterday. I worked at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at the time and every hospital worker knows we don't get breaks no matter what. So they wanted us to sleep at the hospital but I left and went home in time to avoid all this chaos in my warm non icy condo, watching the ice and snow from my balcony😊
As someone who grew up in the blizzards and ice storms of Boston, MA it was troubling to see how unprepared southern states are for this kind of weather. Too many lives are put in danger.