I am in the Six Flags area...no tree breaks here. Lots of road problems, however. At noon yesterday it was snowing a bit and melting. By 1:15 when I left my office there was approx 1/2 inch maybe accumulated, light dusting...but the temp was dropping fast. It seemed like the roads just flashed to ice. My five minute drive home took 45 minutes...lots of slipping going on, gridlock had already started. My wife and I made it home OK...lots of folks did not. Many were gridlocked and stranded, some over 12 hours in their car. We had a friend call from a busy area of Atlanta (Cumberland Mall area). She and her husband were on foot, cold (had to abandon car after 9 hours trying to drive home from work..took them that long to go about 12 miles. She had already fallen once and they couldn't walk too close to roads because of cars slipping on hills or sloped curves and crashing over the curbs.
We got her location, determined from the I-web there was a Kroger (grocery store that was staying open all night) about 2/10 mile south of her position...they had walked past it. They backtracked, used the address we gave her in her smartphone and she found the store. They spent the night in the grocery store...lots of folks spent the night in Home Depots...they stayed open all night, too.
My son has a 4WD truck with knobby tires...goes where lots of 4WD's won't go. He spent about 9 hours last night retrieving friends and family that were stranded on I-20, major interstate here that was gridlocked and shut down. First rescue was a friend and her 4 year old that had been in their car 9 hours, the child had only had b'fast that day. Once the word got out that he could get around (e.g., via Facebook chatter) he became a popular person. :He had to get creative to get around gridlocks...cutting thru business parks, backing down exit ramps and exiting freeways via entrance ramps.
Lindsay and I kept his 2 boys last night while he and his wife did pickups of stranded folks...he had first gone to get her at work and bring her home. Ended up taking her boss home, then the calls started coming in. He never had a chance to bring her home until 4AM.
I just rode with him an hour or so ago to take someone back to I-20 to retrieve their plumbing work van near Six Flags...expressway was still very locked up, barely moving but not totally blocked anymore. It is melting some. It will refreeze again soon..tomorrow has the potential to be another bad driving day in the AM.
Just had a great snowball fight with the grandboys (8 and 3 yrs) and Alex...some fun to be had, too.
