• jqubed@lemmy.world
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    29 days ago

    No, this year’s storm hit on a weekend, and didn’t really get going in Raleigh until nighttime. Most people stayed home. That year’s storm arrived pretty much as forecast but a lot of people ignored the forecast because a storm forecast a couple weeks earlier had fizzled out. It was around lunchtime on a weekday and everyone thought they could still stay at work and drive home and it wouldn’t be a big deal. Then the snow came quick and heavy and everyone panicked and tried to go home at the same time, unleashing rush hour traffic on bad road conditions with traffic jams blocking the plows from treating the roads.

      • Fmstrat@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        The one thing they left out was school buses. Schools did let out early, but too late, so the traffic from the buses and parents melted the first layer of snow, with no plowing or salting. So it refroze into sheets of ice before people left work.

        Source: Me in traffic for 12 hours.

        Note: I now live in a place so cold that this week I hiked in -6F and had ice cream outside at 13F. 😃

  • Cris@lemmy.world
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    29 days ago

    This is the highway sitting right between Raleigh and Durham, seems pretty clear this go around. Not many folks out on the road, but it was like 10pm

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      28 days ago

      That’s the problem in the UK, it only really heavily snows one year in five so it isn’t profitable or economical to really invest in things like snow tires and snow ploughs, so whenever there is significant snow it does kind of cause everything to grind or halt. The alternative is to buy a bunch of snow equipment that needs constant maintenance throughout a winter where it doesn’t get below 3°C, and nothing more exciting than a lot of rain happens.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    28 days ago

    It’s always a bit stupid when people compare weather like this.

    They basically go “I live in the high Arctic and frequently enjoy temperatures of -40°C”, so all those people complaining about snow in Hawaii are overreacting.

    It’s like they don’t listen to the thing they’re saying.

  • Burninator05@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    Late last week I advised my younger coworkers that if we got freezing rain as predicted they needed to just stay home and that they would likely be stuck there for a couple of days. No one here knows how to drive on ice but think their lifted 4x4 truck with bald all weather tires will give them the edge they need. The cities, parishes, and state don’t have the resources to deal with it either.

    One of them (from Alaska) decided to take a 2.5 hour trip to buy a jetski after work on Friday. They’re almost home after leaving Saturday morning to get home.