Is the news from the south serious? Are they really that weak to snow?

[Caiphus]

When I lived in Dubai in 1999, the roads would get fucked whenever there was more than a few hours of moderate rainfall. Because they didn't have drains on the road. Because it rained like once a year.

I imagine it's rather like that. Cool, you're used to snow. Fantastic. If you panicked every time there was snow, you wouldn't get anything done for a third of the year. Other people aren't used to is so they don't prepare, mentally or logistically.

 

[Zontar]

When I lived in Dubai in 1999, the roads would get fucked whenever there was more than a few hours of moderate rainfall. Because they didn't have drains on the road. Because it rained like once a year.

I imagine it's rather like that. Cool, you're used to snow. Fantastic. If you panicked every time there was snow, you wouldn't get anything done for a third of the year. Other people aren't so they don't prepare, mentally or logistically.

A third of the year? You sir underestimate the power of General Winter.

 

[Caiphus]

A third of the year? You sir underestimate the power of General Winter.

Haha. I might do. Your country is huge. I've only visited once, during your summer, to the Ontario and Quebec provinces, and it was bloody scorching half the time.

Nice people though.

Edited for incorrect nomenclature.

 

[Rickenbacker]

If you have no winter tires and not enough snow ploughs to keep the roads clear, 5cm of snow can really screw you over.

 

[mlbslugger06]

I live in Atlanta and all the reports are completely true. I grew up in Indianapolis, then moved Colorado before coming here. I cannot begin to express how embarrassing it is at how poorly Atlanta dealt with such minor snow. My drive home from work, a mere 6 miles, took me over 4 hours to make. People truly have no idea how to drive in any snow and, as such, drive very slowly but also as impatiently as big city drivers.

My work was closed for two days and every school, including the big universities closed for nearly the whole week. The problem is the lack of supplies. The government has not in invested in anything like trucks, salt or even shovels. They just cling to the blind hope that it will never snow.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Ha. I live in Los Angeles and the twitter feeds and facebooks of people here explode about how "freezing" it is if it drops below 50 (Fahrenheit, obviously)

Granted I'm pretty sure the body has some kind of internal thing that adapts to how hot/cold it is around you. I was back east in maryland when they were in the middle of that coldfront and it was -25 at night, and when I got home I could wear a t shirt on a "cold" day

 

[Tsukuyomi]

sad....two inches of snow shuts down a major city. I'm from Wisconsin so like you and Tippy snow and cold is routine to me. Although how an entire city gets screwed up outside of traffic issues all due to a little snow is beyond me. Then again in the last few weeks we've had 3 days' worth of major school closings due to the low temperatures and wind chill. It's pretty sad since I can see elementary schools and even up into high schools. But when college campuses close JUST due to cold, it's absurd to me.

Presumably everyone is an adult. If you are living in the northern states and you DON'T know how to protect yourself from the cold by now, I got no sympathy for you. Heavy jackets exist for a reason, heavy fur bomber caps exist for a reason, scarves exist for a reason, LONG UNDERWEAR exists for a reason. When it's -2 degrees outside you don't just drag on a T-shirt, jeans, and a leather coat and then run out to your car bitching and moaning because it's so cold. Winter doesn't care about your sorry ass. YOU are supposed to be prepared. If you are that cold, that means you were NOT PREPARED. Do you even shovel?

 

[Rylot]

I'm originally from Washington State and used to cold winters, now I'm living in Austin Texas. Last week we got some freezing rain and man was it scary. We had to be out but watching how everyone else was driving really made me nervous. I watched a Mustang spin out and swerve all over a major interstate because he couldn't figure out that gunning it was a bad idea.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

In central and south Florida, snow almost never happens, it's so rare that Wikipedia has an article listing each instance. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_in_Florida] I have never in the course of my life (I'm 24 years old), seen snow here. I needed to travel to a different state. We are not equipped at all to deal with snow, we're barely equipped to deal with ice. Our thickest winter jackets are pathetic compared to northern states, scarves are a fashion accessory as are boots. Long underwear, snow tires, snow blowers, forget they exist.

If it were to snow here long enough that it doesn't melt immediately once it hits the ground, it would shut down the entire state, minus maybe the panhandle. It would also kill all our orange trees and most of the plant life.

On the flip side, we don't even blink when we get the news a category 3 hurricane is heading our way (unless you have beach front property), we've been hit with so many. It takes a category 4-5 to get people to put boards on their windows.

The heat during the summer can get into the lower 90s, that combined with the high humidity makes it muggy and feel more like the 100s. We also get thunderstorms pretty much every evening.

The humidity also makes it feel colder than it actually is.

 

[Moloch Sacrifice]

Clearly, the southern states are Rock and Ground type.

OT, in the UK, where we are generally used to the water being wet when it falls on us, we tend to suffer a similar meltdown. Over the last few years there have been better responses, as we've had several consecutive white winters, but it still doesn't take much to shut us down. I guess it just depends on the local climate, and the experience of local government in dealing with these issues.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

England is similar... we crumble under a few inches, for the same reasons. It effects us such a limited time of the year that we don't snow proof anything.

Our water and gass pipes arn't heated, and are buried just below the ground and therefore freeze; we don't have winter tyres and therefore slip and slide all over the place; people arn't used to ice and injure themselves; and one of the biggest is that it's a different snow. It's not a nice clear cut, sudden drop in temperature, snow. It will get cold, fall a bit, melt a bit, freeze, fall a bit more, melt again, freeze again and so on. That coupled with the horrid moist air we get in winter that makes it very bitter in warmer climates means that the wrong things freeze. Roads break apart. Hills become icy death traps (we have lots off steep, narrow lanes all over the country. And stuff breaks with nobody trained to deal with it and no alternative in place.

At the end of the day it boils down to money. Why spend so much on snow contingency in the UK when we get 7/365.25 days of snow a year? All of which doesn't effect much and doesn't have lasting negative impact on our country?

 

[freaper]

Look, snow might leave northerners cold, but it's a slippery slope for people in the south. The cold could ice a homeless person overnight and, before you know it, snowball into a city-wide panic. If you're not used to snow it's not easy to keep cool. They'll just have to plough through it.

 

[Flatfrog]

I think it's also a lot easier to deal with a large amount of snow than just a couple of inches, as the heavier snowfall remains more powdery which can be cleared, whereas the small amount can turn into ice fast and is generally more dangerous. Or such is the logic the BBC gave for why the UK is always shut down by tiny amounts of snow.

We experienced this ourselves last year when we went skiing in the Alps - snow fell every night and could just be swept off the car without any problems. In the UK, by contrast, snow tends to be wetter, with temperatures hovering around 0C, with the result that it goes through several cycles of melting and freezing, forming layers of thick ice on windscreens and pavements that can be very treacherous.

Plus, as several people have mentioned, maintaining a big fleet of vehicles and other infrastructure to deal with snow is very expensive when it's mostly just for a day or two a year, so it's more economical just to have a couple of days of chaos and suck up the cost.

Having said that, speaking as a parent it does drive me crazy that the instant we get the tiniest sprinkling of snow on the ground, all the schools close, meaning we're suddenly stuck with trying to deal with emergency childcare issues. I genuinely can't understand the logic behind it, it drives me nuts.

 

[Gary Thompson]

The South is sub-tropical, we never get snow, we don't have stuff to handle it and whenever it does snow people crash alot.

It would be like it snowing a few inches in Egypt or southern Spain, we're used to it being insanely hot, just like you're used to it being freezing cold.

 

[2xDouble]

Let me put it to you this way: would you, living in Canada, approve of spending millions in taxpayer dollars on preventing widespread tiger attacks? Of course you wouldn't. It's so ridiculously rare that the budget would be better spent on practical, commonly-needed things, like snowplows. That's the same logic at work here, snow is so rare south of dixie that the expense of maintaining emergency snow equipment far outweighs the benefit.

To put it another, geekier way: of course they're weak to snow, they're mostly Grass and Ground type down there. (Though one might categorize Atlanta, specifically, as Flying type...)

 

[hawkeye52]

I'd like to say that first off, I'm from Canada, and a few inches of snow is what we call a mild fall. There's a 7 month period of the year that snow will not be considered odd, and accumulated snow would be counted in feet if we used that instead of metric. That's just giving a bit of context when I say: What the hell Atlanta? 2 inches? Get that on a random day between January and March and we consider that a mild Tuesday.

Is this just the US media blowing it out of proportions or are people really acting like this for less snow then I'd bat an eyelash at?

Should see how the UK handles it. Every year we get snow almost without fail. Not much of it but just enough to screw up the roads and ice up paths etc and every year without fail the local councils and government completely fail to react and say

"We didn't expect the annual snowfall this year"

 

[Naeras]

They probably don't have any systems in order to actually deal with the snow. Which is an issue if about two meters of snow falls over the course of a week(which pretty much happened here in Norway now, and it's still snowing more D: ). My impression of the reaction most countries, however, is that they see twelve snowflakes countrywide and proceed to shut down the entire country, keep their kids out of school and start stockpiling canned food.

If anyone has an issue with the fact that I'm laughing of that, I sadly can't hear you over the sound of me and some friends jumping into the snow in nothing but our underwear. While we're laughing.

captcha: "who am i"
I'M SOMEONE WHO'S NOT AFRAID OF A LITTLE SNOW IS WHO I AM

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Half the people in Atlanta probably have probably never worn more than 2 layers of clothing at once.

That's not true. I'm living in Atlanta right now (grew up in Michigan) and most of these people break out the scarves and winter coats for 45[sup]o[/sup] F weather (~7[sup]o[/sup] C).

Though much as I might scoff at their susceptibility to cold I can't really blame that for what happened on Tuesday. The 2 inches of snow weren't the problem, it was the ice. I don't care how harsh your winters are, no one is good a driving on ice (especially in a hilly place like Atlanta). Combine that with an already overcrowded road infrastructure and the local government's incompetence in dealing with the conditions (as far as I can tell they didn't even start salting roads until last night) and there's your disaster.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

I live in Louisiana, and yes, we really are that weak to snow; however, the real danger isn't the snow, but the ICE.

One, the city infrastructure. We have no salt trucks or snowplow trucks. None. Whatever ice forms on the road is just there until it melts on its own. We had some flatbed trucks that were able to put some sand on small bridges, but that's it. Snow/ice on the roads is such a rare threat that it simply isn't cost-effective to have the infrastructure in place to handle it when it does.

Two, the social norms. On the same note as the infrastructure, no one in Louisiana owns snow tires or tire chains because, again, snow/ice on the roads happens so infrequently that it's not worthwhile to even know about them and how they work, let alone invest in them. No tire store down here even sells them, you'd have to special order them.

Three, and this is the worst part, almost NO ONE knows how to drive on icy roads in Louisiana. We had over 200 auto accidents in one day in Baton Rouge because people in Baton Rouge are horrible icy road drivers; they go the same speeds they would usually drive, use their brakes the same way they normally would; no concept of how to drive differently in order to be safe on icy roads. I know this stuff because my parents were wise enough to know it and to teach it to me, but I'm the exception that proves the rule.