Massive Storm Buries US East Coast In Snow and Ice

First time accepted submitter anthonycarlson writes "The second wintry storm in two weeks to hit the normally balmy south U.S. has encrusted highways, trees and power lines in ice, knocking out electricity to nearly a half-million homes and businesses." Kids are out of school, and houses are out of power, in much of a region that normally gets much rarer and lighter snowfall. If you're socked in, or if you're in the East Coast storm zone but have to venture out anyhow, what's been your experience? Some of the pictures are pretty impressive. Update: 02/13 17:24 GMT by T : Google Maps has a handy guide to weather alerts, shelters, and traffic info for those affected by the storm. (Hat tip to Chris DiBona.)

Awesome satelite photos

[Yonkeltron]

The GOES imagery [noaa.gov] has looked really cool as of late. As I've watched the storm travel west and then north, it's been really awesome to see the progression and the effects of the Coriolis force.

Re:You southerns are a bunch of wimps.

[TheRaven64]

Bad weather isn't a problem, unexpected bad weather is. Where I used to live (in the UK, so no red vs blue today), we had one day of snow pretty much every year. The city council decided to be very cautious and ensured that they had enough salt and grit available to keep the roads clear if they had a one-week snowfall. One year, we had two weeks of solid snowfall and temperatures below freezing and the whole place ground to a halt. Meanwhile, places a bit further north were fine because they typically had snow all winter and so had prepared for it. Now, you could argue that my council should have prepared for the snow better, but in the 10 years that I lived there I only saw more than one day a year of snow that one winter - maintaining the equipment reserves to handle it every year would have been expensive and you can bet people would have complained about the waste of taxpayers' money.

Meanwhile in Finland

[jones_supa]

+1C, all snow soon melted away.

Re:Where I live, that's normal weather

[Greyfox]

I was going to go into work, but I can't find a mule on short notice. :-P

When I was living down south, I usually ran my tires down to the wires as you can mostly get away with that down there. A good set of new all-season radials goes a long way toward making those crappy roads passable, even with rear wheel drive. Other problem down there is they're not really set up to clear the roads at all, so you get a lot more ice and snow on the road than you do in northern regions. Where I live now I swap my tires out a lot more often and they put some stuff down that keeps the roads more-or-less melted. Though a few days ago I drove in to work on top of a 2" thick layer of ice and didn't have a problem with it. Well... other than the huge temptation to do donuts in the parking lot on top of 2 inches of ice...

Having had 5 days of power outages in the last 4 years, I'm pretty much over expecting the power company to deliver power when I need it most. A backup generator is high on my list of priorities.

Rare?

[CodeArtisan]

I have lived in Connecticut for 17 years. There is nothing rare about the amount of snow that is falling today. It doesn't happen every week, but 12 inches (or whatever we are going to get today) is not exactly Biblical. Mild winters are the rare events.

Re:It's not the same

[DarkOx]

I have spent alot of years both in Minneapolis and in Wilkesboro NC. There is nothing similar about the winters. MN does not get icing like they do in the South except on very very rare occasions because its always cold in MN winter. The precip comes down as snow and it stays snow. MN has the interesting property that the snow gets deeper and deeper because it never melts, which cause load problems on roof tops and like but the snow mostly shakes out of trees and finds its way to the ground before it does them any harm.

Both places have their winter weather challenges but they are very different.