Being just north of Atlanta I have been
completely consumed by Winter Storm Leon since Tuesday.
I guess I should have called the
governor immediately when the new driver in my house said something
about having a good amount of experience driving in the snow. I
moved here from New England. I laugh about living in a snow globe
now because the snow rarely stays on the ground. Now that I think of
it we had snow last week that border lined blizzard conditions with
big flakes of snow, sudden accumulation and heavy winds but there was
just a trace of snow left at the corner of the house by the end of
day.
This storm was different. The new
driver left the house and I let the dog out. I brought the dog back
in and found the wind to be especially cool but I proceeded to work
on my chores. Fifteen minutes later I glanced out the window and the
snow had arrived. My immediate thought was, “big flakes, little
snow, little flakes, big snow.” These were little flakes. Tiny
flakes. I grabbed my phone and started to call my family members
back home.
Atlanta is very different than Boston.
Many people notice that you can actually drive in and around
Atlanta. Boston, not so much. Atlanta has an area of approximately
131 miles whereas Boston covers approximately 48 miles. While Boston
has over 500 pieces of equipment for snow removal, the city of
Atlanta has 40. Atlanta's workday population is 1 million but the
metro area covers 28 counties that are equal to the size of
Massachusetts and the metro area's population is 6 million.
Governor Nathan Deal and Atlanta's
Mayor Kasim Reed have been taking the heat but many forget that
Atlanta has become a megalopolis. For the state of Georgia, this was
a disaster. Leon was not kind to us, nor was it kind to our
neighboring states. Though I realize that we need to address the
handling of communications of weather advisories I'm proud that there
were just 2,100 cars abandoned during the storm. That's a very small
percentage of the 6 million people that were directly affected.
This afternoon, since it was 35 degrees
shoveled the driveway of the 2.5 inches of snow. I needed to scrape
away the tire tracks and the dog's foot prints that were frozen solid
to the concrete but the sun quickly thawed the frozen mess. I
worked for about an hour clearing the snow before retreating inside
to get my hot tea. Georgia will continue to be under a State of
Emergency until Sunday night. We need to get ready for our next
snowfall.
