[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Hmm, I dunno. I mean, let's really break down where things were the worst.

School systems that had major issues look to be Cherokee (where the snow was heavy by 10-1030 but they waited another couple hours to start moving kids), Cobb, Bartow, Gordon (less severe), with scattered issues in Fulton & Atlanta City. Other than that the problems seemed to have been more isolated - like one bus here or there - and subject to some bad luck. Ben will understand that right off but for the rest, that's four counties to the northwest of Atlanta by 30-90 minutes plus two that are more central / "Inside The Perimeter".

Aside from those systems, pretty much everyone else seemed to read & react relatively okay. Pickens, Gilmer, Fannin (east/northeast of those badly troubled four) all pretty much got kids home. Gwinnett (huge system to the northeast) for example, did not dismiss early at all & yet had no problems I've seen mentioned. Point being, they were able to read the data accurately & make a good decision.

As for the employers, yeah, there were some bad calls there it appears. For example last night I watched updates until 1am as a friend's dad FINALLY made it home from Lockheed (in Cobb) to Pickens County ... only took the van pool about 13 hours to make a 60-90 minute trip. Standard travel times for 1 hour trips seemed to be about 6-7 hours for everybody using the major interstates (75, 85, 285 ... or even major highway like 400). The NE side of the perimeter seemed to react especially poorly yesterday, tons of Roswell/Alpharetta travelers going nowhere fast.

Did the DOT respond appropriately? Still too early to say for sure IMO, although the reports of completely stand stills on the south end perimeter (285) without anyone seeing a single helpful vehicle of any kind for 3-4 hours could suggest some allocation of resources problems (that area was projected to get hammered pretty good all along). Certainly an inauspicious start for the procedures that were just revised after a similar snow/ice jam two years ago. I believe we'll hear a lot more about pre-treating programs in the weeks & months to come, those were supposed to be ramped up considerably but it's still uncertain whether they were poorly planned/executed or if they simply failed miserably.

Gotcha.