That Doesn't Count as a Storm

Friday, January 21, 2005

Raleigh North Carolina was shut down yesterday by an inch of snow:

A mere inch of snow was all it took to cripple North Carolina's capital and prompt plenty of finger-pointing Thursday as the city thawed from the surprise storm that caused gridlock and left 3,000 students stranded in classrooms overnight.
...
When the dry snow hit already frigid streets at midday, it turned to ice as schools and businesses scrambled to close early. That sent thousands of cars onto the roads before salt trucks could treat the pavement.

Police handled more than 1,000 accidents, none fatal, and some people were caught in traffic jams that left them on the roads for more than eight hours. Buses were unable to take children home from school, stranding nearly 3,000 students in their classrooms with their teachers overnight. Some motorists who could not get home bunked with others in office buildings and even grocery stores.

An inch of snow shut down an entire major city? An inch of snow?! Are you kidding me? In Wisconsin they sometimes don't even to put down any salt for an inch of snow, and we somehow manage to get kids to and from school, and even drive around town. Hell, they don't even shut down schools for 6 or 8 inches of snow in Milwaukee. That is just sad.

Posted at 6:16 PM by Nick | | |

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Comments:

I feel the need to explain. Being a Southerner, I can say that the reason we shut down for such a light snow is: lack of experience!

People here do not know how to drive in even light snow or ice. They hear snow and they think blizzard, and the images in their mind are of cars sliding all over the place. So they drive 20MPH on the interstate during flurries. They buy a week's worth of food because they think they will be "snowed in" complete with 6 foot drifts--from an inch of snow.

I liken it to if you were to have a tornado in your area. If an F1 were to touch down in Wisconsin (which has probably happened, but is a rare occurence), the citizenry would probably all freak out. Northerners can't deal with tornadoes, Southerners can't deal with snow.

Posted at January 22, 2005 11:05 PM by

Anonymous

Not that I'm trying to start a disaster competition here, but Wisconsin does get tornadoes every year. We may not get as many as states in Torado alley, but we are certainly hit frequently enough, including some wicked F3's and F4's. A couple years ago a city west of Madison was wiped away completely by an F4.

Just some quick google searching yeilded this site that chronicles some of the bigger Wisconsin tornadoes with pictures, and this site which lists every tornado to hit Wisconsin by county from 1950 - 1995.

Posted at January 23, 2005 8:37 AM by

Nick

ok ok ok....so tornadoes were a bad example. The other one I was gonna go with is earthquake, but since I have no experience with earthquakes I went with tornadoes.

Anyway, we've digressed. The answer to the question is that southerners have little experience with snow in any form, and because you can see it coming for days people completely freak out.

Posted at January 23, 2005 10:26 PM by

Anonymous

I sorta see what you mean... but still not really. The earthquake example doesn't help me at all since I lived in California for 12 years. I know all about earthquakes.

Posted at January 24, 2005 12:58 PM by

Nick