OT: Buckeye FB coach stranded in apocalyptic Atlanta traffic jam

• I live about 6 miles from work and it took me close to 7 hours to get home.  I fiinally had to park my car in a subdivision about a mile from my house and walk the remaining route last night. 
• Media is saying that when the snow started around noon or so, the temp was right around freezing and quickly dropped which caused everything to ice over. 
• In addition, all of the schools announced mid-day that they were closing early...which means parents have to leave early to get the kids...and it snowballed from there.  I saw one headline that said "this is what happens when 5.5 million people all get released and hit the streets in about 90 minutes." 
• Once that happened, the salt trucks were rendered useless because they couldn't get around. 
• Per the commenter above, Atlanta is very hilly.  I found out last night that the cause of the delay on my route was a Coke truck that couldn't make it up the hill started sliding backwards and then jack-knifed.

from the series of tweets by the stuck coach has to be this one

 

Come on people, those roads are fine! Not worthy of a 19 hour traffic jam. Yeesh.

 

So what happens when the roads clear up but 1/4 of the abandoned cars, including Herman's, are still on the road. Drivers have to weave in and out of parked cars on the highway? I doubt everyone that abandoned their cars will come back at the same time and make this easy.

Some clarification on this traffic:
Around 10:30 am snow flurries began to fall
At about 11:30-12:00 snow began to fall at a decent pace.
Sometime around 12:00-12:30 all works and schools canceled, which means a city of 6-7 million trying to come home at once.
Nobody outside of law enforcement has any sort of cold weather gear for their cars, and many if not most, have never experienced driving in something like this.
By about 2:30-3:00 the snow had frozen on the roads, and literally everything was ice across the whole city.
The reason the interstates were so backed up was because in several key spots school buses and tractor-trailers had broken down and blocked the highway.

Atlanta traffic is very bad as it is, and the ice and snow didn't help. this wasn't the fluffy powdery stuff that is easy to drive through.

People that say why Isn't ATL prepared for this... Of course they aren't!!!! This happens like once every 5 or 6 years (maybe)!

Of a problem of ineptitude as it was pure numbers of cars on the icy roads.
You northerners have no right to judge us on events that happen once every 5 years!!! That's why the weather is called extreme!!

I read the link and all I took away was that Herman would be hired at PSU by Franklin!

Why would you need a fleet of plow trucks with salt for 2 inches of snow? My road almost never gets plowed, I live at the bottom of a hill that Ts at the bottom because of the lake. I went out and got beer in the middle of the recent storm. I get that they are not used to these conditions but you don't need a fleet of plow trucks when there is only 2 inches of snow.

Is there ice too? Ice is a different story although I still made it up my very steep hill with 6 inches of snow covering ice but I am used to this as I have lived at my current house for 7 years and most of my life in Michigan. Still I look at the pictures and can't help but laugh a little. Stay safe southerners!

I thought my 15-hour traffic-filled drive (it's supposed to take 10) from TN to FL was bad last month but this would be nuts. If there is one thing The Walking Dead taught me it is avoid Atlanta in the event of zombie/snow apocalypse.

Spencer Hall broke down 'hothlanta' on edsbs 

There's apparently people that have been stuck in their cars for literally overy 19 hours with no food or water... how is that even possible? They could walk 30 miles in 19 hours...

Wait - who is he down there recruiting?  Shouldn't the Umich coaches get on this?

Both our Roswell and Atlanta offices are closed today and they were both closed yesterday. Can't help but LOL @ all those people. Welcome to our world 4/12 months.

I live about 20 minutes south of Atlanta...

It's not the weather that has everything paralyzed, it is our complete lack of any sort of capacity to deal with it.  Our game plan is basically wait until everything melts and goes away. 

And the biggest problem (aside from the fact that everyone got on the roads at the same time and we have no salt / sand trucks or plows and it is hilly) is that everything iced over almost immediately.

But yeah, the average southern driver has no ability to deal with this even without the ice.

is why Urban sends his coaches to recruit in Atlanta and why Hoke doesn't; we've got some ballers down here, especially in the suburbs.

Anyway, LOL at Northerners who think we're ignorant hicks who can't handle a little snow.  For one thing, most of the people I share this city with are, unlike me, from somewhere else.  A lot of them are from places like the Midwest and the Northeast where, guess what, they have winters like this.  A lot of those folks (like me) know how to drive in these conditions when they have the space to do it.  But when you put 5 million-plus drivers on the road at the same time in a city known for gridlocked roadways in GOOD conditions while a snowstorm is moving through...you're gonna have a bad time.  The congestion is what killed the city, not the accumulation.  The accumulation made the congestion unrecoverable.  The congestion occurred because the civic and commercial authorities (government and businesses) did a lousy job managing the population/workforce from the start.

I left work at my normal time, 5 o'clock, to wait for the congestion to clear.  Luckily on my route home I didn't run into the worst of it.  I did run out of gas, conveniently across the street from a gas station.  I was able to refuel completely a mile or so down the road and then made it home about an hour later than I usually do (I'm about 25 miles from work where I live and it's typically an hour to an hour and a half one way).  I don't have an SUV like everyone else in this city...I have a (slightly) modified Nissan Cube with new-ish Michelin tires and MAYBE 100hp atw.  But it's a torquey engine and after nearly two years behind the wheel I know how it drives and more importantly I know how to drive taking conditions into consideration.  I never lost grip or traction and was able to switch lanes when I needed to without swerving into a guardrail or a ditch.

Usually we get lucky and the snow that we get hits in the afternoon hours or overnight...as rare as getting snow at all is here, it is rarer still for it to hit smack-dab in the middle of the business day.

Anyway.

We delivered the Bomb.

I like how southerners including the some of the guys that write for EDSBS and Gizmodo are so sensitive about the traffic. No matter how you explain the circumstances the whole situation was rather pathetic and helpless. 

And the state is shut down right down. All roads closed and travel at your own risk...For 3 inches of snow!!! There's accidents like crazy and a couple fatalities.

If there were 100,000 people stuck in the traffic jam, I feel sorry for 99,999 of them.

They use brine around here instead of salt.  The thing is, if it's not wet, it doesn't work.  So they spread it out, then we get a dry snow, and all the cars pack it into a nice skating rink.

close school at a chance of snow and don't open them until every single street is clear. Even if its 1 inch of snow. It's a joke, its snowed last week 2 inches and 3 inches this week, my sons school was closed all but 1 day in 2 weeks.

Many people spent the night in their cars on the expressway. My son was on the surface streets and was stuck for 6 hours. People opened up their homes to stranded strangers, brought our hot chocolate, etc. He had a warm place to stay; many did not.

My road doesnt get plowed when we get a foot of snow and we can get through all right with out even 4 wheel drive

Same thing happened in DC a few years ago.  The problem then was a snow that hit just before rush hour and then the temp dropped enough to create ice everywhere.  I was in a 4x4 Silverado, which did less than you'd think b/c of everyone in front of me.  I'll never forget the vision of a city bus sliding sideways across the intersection.  Bottom line is that it takes very, very little in cities like Atlanta and Washington to jam things up.  All it takes is a few people who lose their minds, slide down a hill or simply stop at the wrong time.

Last summer it took me an hours and 1/2 to go 20 blocks one day because of the combination of a Nats game, Wizzards game and cherry blossoms.  You may recall that the Nats games was delayed 1/2 hour b/c the umpires were stuck in traffic.

Heck the first day we go to Eastern Standard time screws up traffic as people are suddenly commuting in the dark.

All that said, southern drivers suck if they're not making lefts around an oval.

I was in the gridlock on I-75 last night for 12 hours, didn't make it home yesterday. Abandoned my car when the exit I was trying to take had a 6 car pileup.  Walked the rest of the way to my mom's house.  From work to my mom's house was 6 miles.  Had I tried to make it the additional 6 miles to my own house, I'd have been stuck until around noon today. 

The real issue was not so much the weather, but that every school, business, govt entity all shut down at the same time, and the mass exodus of people vastly exceeded the capacity of the roads.  Couple that with inevitable accidents from cars spinning out and otherwise not knowing how to drive in ice and snow, and we had a logjam that was so dense none of the emergency vehicles were able to navigate through to respond and keep the lanes clear. 

The result was an unmitigated disaster, but the weather was more of a catalyst than the primary cause. 

It took me 18 hours to get from Alpharetta to the airport. It was like a seen from an apocalyptic movie. 18 hours of pure hell. But God took care of me and I pray for all who's life was interrupted with this mess!