Panic on the streets of Birmingham

July 4, 2010, Camp Dwyer, Garmser District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan -- 59 degrees C.

Although on the other side of the globe, that's pretty warm, if you ask me.

 

Now 3 days into this in Atlanta and the temp's still not at a level to do major help. Drove 285 today on the top end, and the inside two lanes were completely undriveable--a solid inch or two of snow, ice and car slush.

And school is cancelled for the fourth straight day tomorrow. Figuring they won't open on Friday either, and factoring in an MLK holiday on Monday, that will give the schoolkids a 10 day break. This coming a week after a 15 day Christmas break. So, the scholars of Atlanta will have been in school all of 4 of the past 29 days.

 

There's 20 inches on the ground in my town and light snow is falling. But all will be more or less back to normal tomorrow, with fewer parking spaces, though.

 

C_K, I'm assuming I'll have to head back to the office tomorrow, and am heading to Kentucky afterward. The cars outside my window are coasting by on 75, so I'm hoping I'll be OK.

 

Hasn't gotten above freezing in several days here. *shrug* Roads are mostly clear.

The stuff about South Bend reminds me a joke about Notre Dame, forgiveness if I get it wrong.

So the order that started Notre Dame headed west to start a college campus. They got as far as South Bend before the weather took a turn for the worse and they setup camp for the night.
Some 150 years later, the priests decided that the snow would never stop and South Bend would just have to do.

 

Pretty easy ride home tonight--interstates all have at least 3 lanes completely clear and side roads are getting much better with increased traffic. Pretty much a speed limit ride for the most part.

You should be fine to the office tomorrow. I don't know how bad Tennessee or Kentucky got it, so check some highway maps. Hopefully, it will be sunny tomorrow as well and the highways get even better for you---may just require a little more cautious driving and take you more time than normal. Be safe, ijag.

 

Kentucky didn't get shit, that I know of. I know there's no snow at all where my parents live, in Central KY. Tennessee, not sure, but I won't get off 75, so I should be fine.

I'm not worried about getting to the office. My coworkers, however, live 45 minutes away, out West. I know one of them has already said he couldn't get up his driveway and out today. So I might be alone in the office.

 

My senior year of high school, in New Jersey, we got maybe 6 inches of snow on MLK Day. It didn't get above 10 degrees the rest of the week, which turned all of that snow into solid ice. We were out of school the whole week.
Over the course of the next two months we got an average of one snowstorm per week, and the accompanying one or two snow days with it. This also happened to be after a few years of relatively snow-free winters that led the geniuses at the Dept. of Education to decide they only needed to build one snow day into the calendar.
They ended up adding eight days on the back end of the school year and taking away three scheduled holidays (Presidents Day, a teacher workshop, and one of our Easter break days). By mid-March, when even the kids realized how much time they were going to have to make up, everyone was pretty miserable.

 

I'm just looking forward to the 3 day sabbatical of no mail, no garbage pickup, and no AJC in the driveway ending.

 

Let the record show that my Globe, Times and Wall Street Journal were delivered today in the worst of a real-as-defined-by-science blizzard by 8 a.m. The delivery guy ought to be a publisher. That's devotion to duty. Of course, I only discovered the papers when I ran over them with my snowblower, but it's the thought that counts.