How 2 inches of Snow Shut Down Atlanta - Snowmageddon 2014
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- In the winter of 2014, the southeastern United States was blasted by two powerful winter storms in 14 days. Occurring within an abnormally cold winter due to the emergence of the polar vortex, the bitter cold temperatures, enhanced snowfall, and thick ice accumulations had severe consequences for southern major cities like Birmingham and Atlanta. While the winter weather was accurately forecasted, local and state officials failed to gather and mobilize the necessary equipment to clear the roads, resulting in thousands of car accidents on major highways across the southeast. Today we'll look at how the deviation of the polar vortex can cause major winter storms in more southerly latitudes, analyze the forecasts that were dispatched days before the first event, and come to understand how a few inches of snow shut down the entire city of Atlanta, in what is colloquially remembered as Snowmaggedon 2014.
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How 2 inches of snow shut down Atlanta - Snowmageddon 2014
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Your videos have incredible production value and always look stunningly well made! Great work as always!
Thank you for sticking around!
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
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 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 teared up at the father who walked 6 miles to pick up his kid😭 true love right there.
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.
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
My husband and I lived in Roswell Georgia at that time. The storm had been predicted for at least two days by several different weather outlets. My husband narrowly missed being stuck in this debacle, but because we had watched the weather and believed the forecasts, we were both safe and warm at home.
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.
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 :)
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 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 was in basic training when this happened. Instead of smoking us, they’d make us go stand in formation outside for hours. I never experienced such bad chapped lips in my life, and it’s the reason I ALWAYS have chap stick now. Thanks a lot snowmageddon.
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.
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.
The Washington DC area suffered a similar event, I believe in the late 1960s. Forecasting wasn't as good as it is now, but around 10:00 am the snow started. I think it was around 2:00 or 3:00 pm the entire government, which was over 60% of the work force, were all told to go home at the same time. All the highways were instantly clogged. It took my father 11 hours to drive what usually took him 1 hour to get home.
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
Thank you for your very thorough coverage of this. I live in west Atlanta and it’s amazing how accurate the predictions were. It started in the 10am hour just as they said (I was driving to work). Lessons were definitely learned.
As a synth musician and enthusiast, I love the "synth model" display sequence at the very beginning of this great video. Nice touch!
Major props for knowing how to correctly pronounce the abbreviation for Oklahoma City! Commercial airline pilots especially are notorious for saying "Oak City."
Love your videos! Keep it up!
nobody cares
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.
I remember this. I was in 10th grade. I'm from Virginia and we got almost a foot. I was staying the night at my best friend's house. We got snowed in for three days and had a grand old time. Had cupcakes and sushi. Played Bully Scholarship Edition on the Wii just about the whole time. Stayed up til 3am. Saw his dog have a seizure (that part wasn't so fun). I have some good memories from that storm. He's still my best friend to this day and we're 26 now.
I remember this. I was only 8 years old, but I remember playing in the snow and having snowball fights with my family. Fun times.
Nice presentation as always. I went into work that morning near I-285 northwest of Atlanta, figuring I could get out by late morning and be home before things got bad.
I figured wrong.
I got stuck in the rush of vehicles on the roads as everything closed up and people scrambled to get home or get their kids. What was normally a half hour drive to my house became almost eight hours. Even slight hills became impassible due to just enough ice to prevent traction. I tried several different routes home, and finally made it about 8pm. Somehow I avoided any collisions, but there were several near misses as cars slid.
When I was forecasting on local tv back in Dayton, I was often frustrated by my lack of skill at predicting snow amounts. Some things never change, I guess. :-) At least I don't have to worry about that here in Miami!
thanks for covering this - it was a wild event to live through!
As a truck driver based in the south, this situation has to be one of my biggest fears while out on the road.
I grew up in Monroe, GA, about halfway between Atlanta and Athens, and I remember being a junior in high school when this happened. I remember that there was a lot of confusion about whether or not it would actually snow or not. We initially went to school that day, and they released us at lunch. I had a doctor's appointment in the afternoon, and I left right when the snow began. Despite being 17 years old, driving a (then) 25-year-old Ford Ranger, and only having seen snow a handful of times in my life, I thankfully got home safely, but even at the early stages of Snowmageddon, cars were sliding off of the road.
I know that other parts of the country love to laugh at Georgia over this incident, and maybe rightfully so, but you do have to remember (as WeatherBox points out) that most people down here are only used to seeing the real accumulation of snow a couple of times a decade. We also do not really have the infrastructure to clear snow compared to areas in the Northeast and Midwest. Maybe we should, but at the same time, a heavy investment into infrastructure to deal with winter weather in Georgia is pretty hard to justify when these events are so rare. The freezing of rain/snow slush creating ice rink-like conditions on the road, combined with the factors that I mentioned above, created a nightmare scenario.
In any case, Snowmageddon was an insane day and dominated conversation for quite a while after.
As an Atlanta resident who lived through this. My family got mad lucky here. I was out sick with a high fever and my dad just came home for lunch so we were all at home when shit went down and i heard from buddies who were stuck in traffic for 12 hours to get home and from people who had to abandon their car. Fortunately for us we were good but it took like a few days before we went shopping and back to college and stuff.
I remember this… I was in the 3rd grade. (I’m 18 now about to graduate) My grandma was a volunteer at the school, and would essentially stay there all day to help me and teacher with anything. We left early that day, while my mom was still at work when we got home around 2 o’clock. Her friends wanted to stay at work while she wanted to go home, and essentially had to say “get in the car so I can drop you off or goodbye.” Moral of the story is she made it home before it got bad!
I just love that keyboard intro ❤❤❤❤ this one is my favorite of them so far.
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.
I remember my dad being stuck in there, I remember he came back home without his truck. I don’t remember if he came walking or if someone else was driving. I was excited over the snow since I was very young but I remember my mom panicking. Very grateful my dad was okay❤
I remember being trapped in school when this happened. I never thought I was gonna make it home. It changed how I view snow, today.
i was in middle school, stayed in Stone Mountain at the time. remember everybody’s parents picking them up early from school since they cancelled in the middle of the day, but mine didn’t come since he’s from up north and wasn’t “leaving work for 2 inches of wet snow”. i walked to the house.
He made it home at like 1AM from Alpharetta after leaving work on time (5:30PM) lol shoulda picked me up
I was in middle school at the time, and my moronic school tried to get away with a school day anyway. We learned about an hour in that we would be going home an hour after that, at like 11AM. Yay! My bus proceeded to arrive a the school at 8PM, and by around 11:30PM, we were finished with most of the route and had only 3 kids left on the bus - myself included - but got stuck in ice. At 12AM, my saint of a mother parks at the edge of our neigborhood and walks to the bus to pick us up and drop us off. I ended up getting home around 12:30AM, and I was one of the lucky ones. A lot of kids had to stay the night at the school which, in hindsight, makes me feel for those poor staff who did NOT sign up for the bs that probably went down.
TL;DR: My Marietta middle school ruined our snow day by forcing an """early release""" instead of cancelling school. I got home around 12:30AM and many kids got totally stranded.
Edit: just watched the rest of the video where he talks about schools and the fact that most things realized at like 1pm. Guess I can't be too mad at my school.
I lived right off of 285 during the 2008 event and that was far worse. In my area we got 6 inches of snow and the roads were shut down for a week. The one reason the 2012 situation was as bad as it was is because the snow fell mid-day. I was working 3rd shift that night and once all the panicking masses had sufficiently placed thier vehicles into trees and ditches, my evening commute on the night everyone was huddled into the local restaurants for warmth, was free and easy.
As a former resident of Alabama, I live in Ohio now, so I’m used to snow, but I used to live in Birmingham and I remember getting the news at my preschool that we had to stay there all night because of the storm. It was really stressful for me as I never done that kind of thing for, however, once they said we can go out and play in the snow on the playground. I kind of just forgot about it all, but I don’t remember seeing snow out there. I remember it falling though, and I remember waking up and being the first one up and just sitting there on my little nap for like an hour and a half. I remember the next day it wasn’t even my parents who picked me up. It was our old friends who had a pick up truck with four-wheel-drive, and I remember being one of the last picked up
Back in December 2017 I'd just moved near Savannah GA. It snowed ~5 inches. I had just moved from Flagstaff AZ so it was nothing new to me. However, with that snow, temps in the mid 20s for a few days, and no plows, the roads were ice rinks.
The longer I live in Atlanta the more I learn that if everyone thinks all will be okay, that's the one time everything will be chaos. Still do not regret switching shifts that day and staying home.
EVERYtime I watch your channel, I am rewarded. Gracias!
When I have to drive in snow, which I avoid here in Northern Nevada, it's other drivers who give me concern because they seem to believe they can drive at normal speed, because they have 4WD/AWD.
I love how I understand all of this because I was already a weather buff! Been one since I was a kid. We've even had a few of our own events out here in the central valley. We had snow for the first time in my life. That doesn't happen much on the valley floor, so naturally, I was fascinated. We get snow up on the Grapevine and I swear they are NEVER ready for it, and then places out in the deserts get snow. If I wanted to see any, Sequoia National Park is closer. Besides, who wants to have a snowball fight on the 58 IF it even snows. My fascination wasn't limited to that 1998 Snowfall. I was already interested in how it was going to effect traffic. What people were going to do to get home, or get to work. Was this an isolated event? And the only way I was gonna get that info was to listen to the news. It's become a bit of an obsession, watching the skies, tracking storms, looking at the north pacific to see what is coming next. . . . Send Help! LMAO! Seriously, you have actually helped a lot. There has been a lot of stuff I haven't understood underneath what I do, and dayumn if you don't make it so simple.
Pre-salting the roads can't be understated. I live in Maryland, and every time there's a chance of snow hitting, at least 12 hours before the first flake falls, the roads are caked with salt. Very few times have I ever had problems on the Interstate with snow in Maryland, and that's only when the snow was unexpected. Salt is pretty much omni-important to keeping the roads safe.
This was the first winter in GA after my family and I moved to metro ATL from NYC. We were shocked at how it shut everything down. I was 12 so I was excited to miss school because in NYC school would not have been shut down. Sometimes my mom made the decision to keep us home from school on snow days because it was too slippery to walk.
I was not expecting to renew Packers playoff scars on a weather channel, thank you for that.
That takes me back! I was in elementary school back then. I got picked up by my parents, but we got stuck going up a hill miles from home, right behind a school bus. We had to ditch and walk 2 miles home with a bunch of neighborhood kids all huddled together in a big group.
I LOVE the highlighting of key phrases and sounds when they’re said, it makes me feel like I'm really learning information rather than just watching it
2:15 "northern 🤖 annual 📟 mode 📲"
I was in my sophomore year of college in Raleigh, NC. My roommate tried running to the grocery store with her boyfriend, but they got stranded and had to walk back to his apartment. I remember watching traffic from my dorm window. Saw a few fender benders.
That famous meme image of the flaming car in a ditch was taken in Raleigh.
As someone from Atlanta and had lived up North a couple of times, Northerners don't understand that we may see snow once or twice a year, but it only sticks to pavement once every few years. Even then, it melts in just hours. It'll only accumulate and stay in our roadways for up to 24 hours or longer once every 10 years. I can count on my right hand how many times we've had a major snow storm in the last 46 years. It's that rare so big mistakes were made. Now, we're overkill cautious and choose schools and whatnot down even if there is a slight chance of snow.
I lived in South Carolina. As a kid we never got snow, so I remembered 2014 as the year we got snow.
Dude I love your videos, they're sick. I wanted to let you know that I appreciate the amount of effort you put into them, and that I look forward to each video you post. You da best!
I remember this event. I was living in Athens, GA, and attending UGA. We all knew it was going to snow and were anticipating the order to shut down the university so we could get a snow day. We all willingly admitted we couldn't drive in snow, especially since the snow we typically get here in the South is much different from the snow typically seen int he North. I've never seen the fluffy, dusty snow I've seen in the movies or in user uploaded videos from Northerners and Midwesterners. I've only ever seen and dealt with the hard ice that falls as snow, freezes, accumulates, the freezes again on the top layer. So it's not really snow at all, but ice. Which is nearly impossible to drive on.
But I digress. When we never got the alert that UGA (or ATL) would close, we were all shocked and annoyed. A lot of students and professors just decided not to go to class. My classes weren't cancelled, so I decided to walk to class and maybe ride the bus instead of drive my moped like I usually do. Sure enough, it started snowing at 1:30pm sharp. Exactly like we all knew and expected it to. THEN the city of ATL and UGA closed, forcing everyone to find their own way home on foot since the buses largely stopped running with UGA closed.
Athens got a layer of ice covering every single surface (at least a 0.25 in), then about an inch or so of snow on top of that, then another layer of ice on top of that. The snow was hard as a rock, not malleable in the slightest (so no snowballs), and we resorted to riding road signs and even a kayak down the icy hills. We ended up getting the whole week off from school.
I remember hearing all the horror stories of the poor folks trapped on the Perimeter in ATL because of the conditions and the stupid last ditch attempt to close everything all at once, even though they knew the bad weather was coming. Thank God for those social media pages where people could call for help and offer shelter, drink, and food. There were also stories of locals who made PB&J sandwiches and hot coffee and walked out onto the roads to the stranded people and gave out the food and coffee, free of charge. Locals opened up their homes to strangers, stores opened and stayed open way past operating hours to offer warm havens for stranded people, etc.
So in the end, if was the locals who were the true heroes and Southern hospitality shone brightly that week.
I lived in South Mississippi at the time. This is referred to as icemagedon. There were ice patches in front of my dorm for a week.
Also as a new ATL resident I can point out that GDOT does have stockpiles of salt now.
This event was such a surreal and awesome memory for me. I was at ksu which is right off I-75 so there were tons of cars stuck. We helped move as many as possible and I have lots of pictures of the roads full of cars. The coolest thing though was being able to walk back and forth and stand in the middle of I-75. Since the road was closed where I was there were no cars and I took the once in a life time chance to just stand in the middle of the interstate (without having a deathwish). I love snow so I loved the whole thing.
I live an hour west of Atlanta, and I have never heard of this. I do remember that school was let out early and ice had formed on the roads. Thankfully, no one even went off the road where I live. It was so damn weird to see snow for the first time in person…well, that I can at least remember.
Edit: We got like at most an inch of snow where I live that actually stayed on the ground.
Also I can confirm the statement at 10:20. Atlanta is already a goddamn nightmare on a sunny day.
Deal was a moron, and Reed at least took responsibility, so there’s that.
Here in the UK we have a phrase called the "Polar vortex of doom" thanks to this winter. That winter brought 3 months of continuous atlantic storms, big difference from what you guys had.
I remember this like it was yesterday. Live 5 miles away from school yet it took me 5 hours to get home because of a bus blocked a one lane road to my neighborhood. I had to walk to the neighborhood behind my house to pick my sister up.
As someone from Manitoba, Canada I’ve dealt with my fair share of “snow days”. Luckily our city is prepared for weather like this, & typically nothing ever gets this bad. Seeing communities struggle like this because they simply don’t have the means not too is heartbreaking 🥺
The dad that walked 6 MILES to get his daughter made me tear up 🥹 I know that my fiancé and I would’ve done the same damn thing for our little girl!
feel like this is gonna blow up yet another great video bro keep it up
You should cover the derecho that happened in Ottawa Canada in 2022! I was caught in that. I was in the O train on an above ground part of the track when they stopped the train suddenly. Then the wind happened. My mom called me because she thought it was a tornado. There wasn't any warning or communication with that event. I would love your analysis!
This video was great as someone who experienced it, but can you talk about the winter storm in like 2011(?) that dumped 10+ inches on Atlanta? Basically everything was shut down for a week+. My street (with very steep hills going both directions, my house at the very bottom), was absolutely crammed full of abandoned cars for at least 5 days. This was before we had as many snow plows/salt trucks than even in 2014. The plows and trucks took at least a week to get to our street in Duluth. Also, I think less than a month later we got ANOTHER 4 inches or so?? It was nuts. Missed almost 2 weeks of school I think
I was a college freshman during that storm. The first time it happened in Dec 2013, the dooming hall ran out of food, and we all were allowed to raid the school convenient store to get food. Water was conserved by not allowing showers and each student got a certain amount of water bottles. It was simultaneously a relaxing experience (I lived on the top floor so I was the warmest) and the most dire situation I’d seen up until that point in my life. The second “blizzard” had more preparation and we had free access to the dining hall if we were stuck. Stayed put both times.
And my husband (boyfriend at the time) picked up stranded neighborhood kids on his bicycle and took them home. People died in their cars.
I worked for the county back then, and they surprisingly didn’t play around and let us go pretty early.
I witnessed a swath of people who clearly don’t understand how bridges can ice early and helped push a dozen cars or so at 17th street.
I remember that day. I avoided getting stuck by taking the local roads instead of going on the highway. It was crazy
I remember not being able to get home from school due to icy conditions and we abandoned my mom's car at the school and walked home. I wasn't dressed properly that day. Truly once in a lifetime stuff
I was a senior in high school that year and most of us had to walk home. No one expected it to get that bad
My dad got stuck on GA 400 in this and endee up just parking his car on the shoulder and walking the 10 miles home in dress shoes. My brothers and i got out of school early and ended up loading up backpacks with food and walkinf it up to kids and neighbors that were stuck in schools and houses because the busses couldnt run up and get them or they were stuck at home. Tbh ill never forget that winter, it was a really wild time.
Perfect timing, wanted a new weatherbox and here it is!
I lived in Birmingham at the time of the snowpocalypse in one of the many highlands neighborhoods in the city. Hill + ice = bad. I didn't leave the house that day. I was scheduled to be at work at 4 pm, but I knew I wasn't going anywhere. The main way out of my neighborhood was a very steep hill and my house was in the middle of it lol. I did get to watch everything go down on social media and the news. I lived in Montana, so 2 inches of snow is nothing, but I had the foresight to realize that the ground was cold enough for ice to form. I also lived in Birmingham long enough to know that nobody was prepared for what was about to go down. Granted, Birmingham traffic isn't Atlanta traffic. But Birmingham traffic is still terrible in its own right for the population that lives here.
I love your uploads and I wait to watch them when I have enough time to dedicate my full concentration to them. Incredibly informative!
My dad got stuck on an on-ramp to his work and hoofed it to a walmart then his work where he camped it out. He has a little medal now about what happened.
Everything deciding to shut at once reminds me of 2010 in the UK. I lived rurally and was attending college in the city, reliant on buses for my commute. One day, I stayed back late in the morning to hear what the radio had to say, feeling the trade-off of being late was worth it for the security of knowing whether college would be open or not.
Well, it seemed there would be no closure, so I got ready and stepped out the front door, and massive flakes started to fall from the sky. I went immediately back inside and emailed my lecturer that I wouldn't be in that day because I was afraid of being stranded and unable to get home.
A few hours later, I get a panicked phone call from my big sister (who lived in the city at the time) checking where I was, because the buses had been cancelled and the colleges closed. I also soon got an email back from my lecturer saying much the same, that the college had closed because the buses had been cancelled due to the weather. I like to think he was chuckling to himself as he wrote that one.
It started snowing here about 11:00, I went and picked the kids up from school when it started. Luckily, we watched the storm from home.
I remember this. I was working a retail job at the time and distinctly remember being called in because so many people called out that morning. It was my first time driving on such icy roads.
it’s insane how 2 inches of snow affects people, in upstate ny we had 40 inches and it didn’t affect us as much as it affected them
I would really like to see a video on the December 10-11 2021 tornado outbreak. one of my favorites to read about!
I remember that. I was in 6th grade. Me and my mom was dropping somebody off and then the snow got here quick and heavy. We were stuck. Got picked up at school at 4. Got home at 11 through various hitch hikes and the last on a cop seeing us walking at a bridge. Many cars including hours got stuck.
I remember January 2014 very well. Here in Michigan it was quite terrifying and we haven't matched it since. Everyday was an inch or two. Bad times...
I remember this, I was in HS. THANK GOD my mom picked me up from school early that day (the administrators were mad the reason she gave was weather!) because my friends who stayed at school had to spend the night there!
In Newfoundland they use the term “Snowmageddon” to refer to the 72-hour period in January 2020 when they got 90-plus cm (36 inches) of snow with hurricane force winds.
Here in Michigan where I live, if there's a threat of a couple inches of s ow, the salt trucks are out BEFORE the snow hits. What happened in Atlanta, as does here, is the snow quickly freezes and becomes ice when traveled on.
I remember this. My mom was stuck at work and me and my dad were stuck at home and I was sick.
When this happened, we were having a storm at my house in Massachusetts, we got 23 inches that day. EVERYONE got snow that week, it was ummmm, memorable…