Recovering From The Storm

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.