Stupid People Who Drive With Snow On Windshield

The driver of this car caused a collision in Montreal.
Hmm. Wonder why?

One day about a week ago, I was driving along after one of Vermont's frequent bouts with mixed precipitation this winter.

I had been unable to scrape the frozen snow off the roof of my truck before I left home. It was really stuck on there. In hindsight, I probably should have tried harder to get that stuff off the truck roof.

By the time I got to Winooski, the snow and ice had started to melt. I stopped at a light on a downward sloping hill and all that snow and ice came down on the windshield.  It was too much for the windshield wipers to handle.  

So, I did what I thought everyone else would have done: I put on my hazard lights, pulled over to the side of the street, got out of the truck and cleaned all the ice of my windshield, then continued on my way.

Apparently, not everybody does that. For proof, check out two of the videos below, and a third from a person who definitely was from Canada, let me tell ya.

 I have seen lots of people driving around with snow on windshields, back windows, you name it. Clean the damn snow off so you don't crash into me and others, you morons!

 The Weather Channel just featured somebody causing a crash because they had an experience similar to me:  Snow had fallen on their windshield, but in their case, they kept going.

Here's that video. I hope the person who caused the crash feels like a real idiot:



And check out this video from last winter in Toronto:



Now, here's a video of somebody who DID make the effort to remove snow from the windshield.  This was in Vancouver, Canada, and he used a very Canadian way to do the job. Look what he's using to get the snow off the car:

Freezing Rain Turned Vermont Into An Icy Disaster Last Night; More Ice Nightmares Today

Pedestrians walk gingerly on a very icy sidewalk in downtown
Burlington, Vermont during Wednesday evening's ice storm. 

Well, that was a nightmare.

Last evening, freezing rain moved into Vermont just in time for rush hour, and it came with more of a vengeance than almost anyone expected. The result was one of the worst Champlain Valley traffic nightmares I can remember in the more than 30 years I've lived in this region.

As of mid-morning this Thurdsay, it's not quite as bad as it was last evening, but untreated roads, sidewalks and driveways are still a nightmare.

This evening's commute could be another real headache. I'll get into this more in a minute further down, and you'll want to read it. There's still some icy danger on the Vermont roads now, through the day into tonight.

First, let's go chronological order and unpack what happened Wednesday evening.

We knew freezing rain was a risk well ahead of the onset of Wednesday's storm. That's why winter weather advisories were up ahead of the mess for all of Vermont except the areas along the Canadian border.  That winter weather advisory did include Burlington, which was the epicenter of Wednesday evening's

Starting Tuesday evening if not before, everyone was being advised that the Wednesday evening commute would probably be tricky. But it turned out to be a lot trickier than almost everyone, including me, imagined.

The first problem was there was the idea, especially in the northern half of Vermont, that the freezing rain would be mixed with, sleet or snow. Or even that the sleet and snow would predominate. The added sleet and snow - though dangerous -  would give you more traction on the road that just freezing rain alone.

Ice glistens in trees and glares off  the pavement on Main Street in
 downtown Burlington, Vermont during Wednesday evening's ice storm.

Instead, there was almost no snow or sleet. Virtually all the precipitation right up to and past the Canadian border was freezing rain. At the onset, the National Weather Service hastily extended the winter weather advisory all the way up to the Canadian border.

Especially in the northern half of Vermont, the precipitation was forecast to come down quite lightly. Instead, there was a burst of freezing rain that came down fairly heavily.

Burlington reported 0.34 inches of precipitation. Not huge, but more than enough to create havoc. The main band of freezing rain only lasted four hours or so, but the timing was terrible.

The freezing rain moved in right at rush hour. And it went from a sprinkle to a serious drenching very quickly. I was traveling between St. Albans and Burlington at the time on Interstate 89, and I drove into the onrushing band of freezing rain.

In Georgia, everything was fine. By the time I hit Milton, it was pure smooth ice. Figure skater Michelle Kwan would have approved of the ice conditions for her routine.

Temperatures were only in the mid-20s at the onset of the freezing rain. It wasn't even close to 32, which meant the rain froze fast and hard.  I was driving on Interstate 89 in Colchester on a slight decline. My truck brakes were totally ineffective. I only avoided hitting the car in front of me by steering into the breakdown lane and gaining traction on the rumble strip.

Everybody else was having the same problem. Soon, people did start hitting each other. There was a 13-car pile up in Richmond.  Other crashes occured on Interstate 89 and near the Lamoille River bridge between Milton and Georgia.

Plus, a lot of people couldn't make it the slightest hill. Soon, Interstate 89 and every other road in the region was pretty much gridlocked.

With all the cars backed up, the salt trucks couldn't even get through the traffic to salt the roads. People were reportedly trapped in their cars on Interstate 89 northbound for two hours or more. A half hour commute for some people streched to nearly four hours.

Finally, later in the evening, Vermont State Police and other agencies were able to herd Interstate traffic into breakdown lanes so that the salt trucks could get through.

Things temporarily got better late at night, around 10 or 11 p.m. When liquid water freezes on contact, it releases a bit of latent heat. That, combined with a weak south wind, warmed things up so many parts of the Champlain Valley rose just above freezing. Some of the ice melted off the roads.

On the way back to St. Albans at 10:30 to 11 p.m. or so last night, there were still several cars abandoned in the breakdown lanes of Interstate 89. Rest areas were jammed with tractor trailer trucks, whose drivers wisely decided to give up on moving until things improved.

Trees were also weighed down by the ice last night, , but the brief thaw melted the ice off, so additional freezing drizzle today won't increase the danger of broken tree branches and power lines - except in a very few areas where it didn't get above freezing.

The only way to keep an ice storm going is if you get fresh supplies of cold air to overcome the latent heat release from rain freezing on contact. To do that, you'll need a steady, if light flow from the north. That's why the famous ice storm of 1998 lasted for three days. We kept getting a fresh supply of cold air.  

Which leads us to this morning, and the not-at-all-good situation out there now.

TODAY AND TONIGHT'S ICE SITUATION

My St. Albans, Vermont driveway is a skating rink this
morning after last night's freezing rain. This morning's freezing
drizzle and freezing fog is NOT helping. 

In the wake of last night's disturbance, a flow of north winds is funneling down the Champlain Valley this morning. It's below freezing in most locations, especially the Champlain Valley.

This is a repeat of what happened Monday, only worse because temperatures are lower and the subfreezing temperatures extend through the valley, not just the northern tip.

There's ice covering untreated roads and sidewalks and driveways. I simply cannot walk on my driveway. Luckily, I have a supply of sand that I will apply after I write this. There's patchy freezing drizzle and freezing fog around. I'd still be careful if you venture out today.

As it stands now, it looks like the Champlain Valley, especially the northern half, will stay below freezing all day. The rest of the North Country will hover near 32 degrees for the rest of the day.

Which leads us to the next storm this evening. The National Weather Service in South Burlington has already issued a winter weather advisory for areas outside the Champlain Valley. That's because this next storm is also bringing rain. With temperatures near 32, freezing rain is likely to coat roads again.

Initially, it was thought the Champlain Valley would stay warmer than it currently is, so there was no winter weather advisory. However the NWS in South Burlington, as of 10 a.m. this morning, was re-evaluating this. Given the cold north flow, the onset of precipitation this evening will probably be in the form of freezing rain in much of the Champlain Valley.

The only saving grace is the rain looks like it will start a little later than it did last evening, which means more people will have arrived home from work before the mess starts than last night.

Tonight, again, will be much like Monday night. Overnight, the winds from the south will really pick up, so after midnight, anything that comes out of the sky will be non-frozen rain. The last places to end the icing will be the protected valleys of north central and northeastern Vermont.

Then, another rinse and repeat. Just like Tuesday, Friday morning will be warm - in the 40s. That, I hope, would melt some of the accumulated ice out there Then, like Tuesday, temperatures will fall in the afternoon, and be below freezing by evening. Which of course means there will be more ice underfoot.

Enjoy!

Mediocre Snowstorm Shuts Down A Major U.S City, Again

Just lovely. Highways 40 and 64 in the St. Louis
metro area on Friday. 

A winter storm is moving west to east across the central U.S. having started in the Rockies, moving through the mid-Mississippi Valley, with an eye on eventually getting to places like Virginia.

For areas in the Midwest being affected, it's a pretty big snowstorm. It won't be the worst ever, but it's substantial, dumping six to 12 inches in a wide swath from Kansas to the Mid-Atlantic.

By the way, us New Englanders are going to completely miss this snowstorm. It's passing by well to our south.

This pretty good but not enormous storm has had an outsized effect in St. Louis, Missouri. As the snow flew, cars also flew off icy highways. The result was absolute gridlock Friday evening and overnight. People were stuck local freeways for many hours as people got stuck on icy roads, or people couldn't get past traffic accidents.

Video is at the bottom of this post.

People in the St. Louis area reported that it took five or six hours to get home from work on trips that normally take 15 minutes or so. As of early this morning, there are reports of numerous people in cars and trucks stuck on Interstate 44 in Eureka, Missouri, west of St. Louis, with no end in sight.

I get it that St. Louis is not exactly in the Arctic, and they aren't nearly as used to snowstorms as, say,Minneapolis or Buffalo.

Timing had a lot to do with this mess, as it does often when cities get gridlocked in snowstorms. The worst of the storm came into St. Louis during the day, when everybody was at work. When they tried to get home, chaos ensued, as they say.

The snowy traffic nightmare continued well into the night around
St. Louis. This is Interstate 44 on a traffic cam image

This is the second time this winter that a major metropolitan area got gridlocked by a daytime snowstorm. In November, the same thing happened in the New York City metro area.

People then were trapped in cars almost overnight. That snowstorm dropped a whopping six inches of snow. You'd think that wouldn't be a big deal, but whatever.

Before I get too smug as a winter-hardy Vermonter, I've seen this situation happen around here, too.

It  usually takes me a half hour to get home to St Albans from work in Burlington. I can remember being trapped on local roads and Interstate 89 for up to three hours during snowstorms.

It seems like everywhere, people just don't know how to drive in the snow. Or don't want to drive properly in the snow.

I guess that's human nature, so we will always hear of these tales of people stuck unnecssariily in big storms.

Here's motorists trying, and largely failing, to move along Interstate 44 in downtown St. Louis last evening:

Will Charlotte, Raleigh, North Carolina Be The Next Atlanta?

As that huge ice and snowstorm continues to blast the Southeast, the latest trouble spot seems to North Carolina.

In this image from @wxbrad via Twitter,
traffic is backing up in Charlotte, N.C. and
some people are abandoning cars.  

It's beginning to look like cities like Charlotte and Raleigh might be the next Atlanta. We'll see.

As of 2 p.m. Tuesday,  The Weather Channel and other media outlets were reporting major traffic backups as people in those bigger North Carolina cities try to get out of work and get home before the worst of the storm hits.

Only problem is, the storm HAS hit.

North Carolina is beginning to look reminiscent of the problems last month in Atlanta, when everybody fled schools and work at midday as a snow fall intensified, and ended up getting trapped in massive traffic jams on skating rink highways for up to 20 hours.

This time, Atlanta is getting an ice storm and pretty much everybody, spooked by what happened last time, stayed home, so there's almost no traffic on Atlanta metro freeways.

Let's hope that places like Charlotte and Raleigh don't get as bad as Atlanta did.

Huge Atlanta Snow Traffic Mess/Fail Due To Unheeded Warnings

The news that I'm sure you've seen out of Atlanta is epic and horrendous.

Yesterdays snow and traffic disaster in Atlanta.  

When a snowstorm- not a big one, maybe one or two inches, hit during the middle of the day Tuesday, everybody piled into their cars at once and tried to flee for home.

Many people, including some children on school buses, were stranded on the freeways for eight, ten, even 12 hours. 

Some people were still trapped on the freeways early this morning when it was almost time for commuters to start heading into work.

Annoyingly, some victims of the Atlanta snow complained that meteorologists didn't warn them the snow was coming, but the record shows they did, with watches going up more than a day before the storm and more serious warnings many hours before the first flakes fell.

This was not a huge forecasting error, as some in Atlanta area municipal government would have it.     It wasn't. Meteorologists were pretty much right about the timing and intensity of the storm around Atlanta.

The real problem seems to be that government officials, and many citizens of the area, didn't know how to respond to the weather warnings.

The fact that everyone left their schools and offices at about the same time during the day Tuesday  as the snow arrived meant everybody was on the icy roads at once, so nobody went anywhere.

The city and region was ill prepared to treat the roads with salt and sand, and few motorists had much experience, or the necessary snow tires, to navigate the ice.

Given Atlanta's poor performance record of managing snow and ice storms, why didn't they just call off school for the day?

True, it wasn't snowing in the morning, when parents bundled the kids off to school. But the snow was accurately forecast to start by midday, which you'd think somebody would have realized the trip home from school would be problematic.

Even if the snow didn't materialize one snow day on a day in which it didn't snow isn't THAT big a deal.

And what of the major employers in the Atlanta metro region? Haven't they ever heard of telecommuting?  Granted, productivity might have slumped a bit for the day if many employers stayed home, opened up their laptops and tried to get work done in the home office.

But how productive is it to have their workers stranded and freezing on freeways for most of the day?  Instead of sending everyone for the doors when it started snowing at midday, a lot of employers could have told many of their employers to stay home and work Tuesday.

The forecasts were out on Monday. The workers could have taken their material home with them Monday evening.

I also don't think a lot of people understand the system of watches and warnings the National Weather Service puts out when a dangerous storm is approaching.  A watch means to prepare for a likely storm, and a warning means the storm is imminent or already happening.  A lot of people don't make the distinction.

Plus, storm warnings sometimes go up and the storm doesn't prove to be that bad. So people are lulled into thinking the storm won't amound to anything the next time a warning goes up.

This isn't unique to Atlanta. People have died or gotten in danger in storms as diverse as the Joplin, Missouri tornado in 2011 and flooding from Tropical Storm Irene in Vermont, also in 2011.

The National Weather Service and emergency managers are wrestling with language they'd use in different degrees of storm intensity.  But how do you effectively inform the public to take mild precautions for a middling storm, and extreme precautions for an enormous, dangerous storm?

It's a puzzling alchemy, especially since different people respond to different warnings in varying ways. Plus, it's human nature not to respond to a warning unless they actually see the danger with their own eyes. 

People don't take cover from tornadoes until the funnels are right on top of them. People don't get out of the way of flash floods until they see the muddy, debris choked water racing right towards them. And urbanites don't take snowstorms seriously until the flakes are really flying.

So, if you get an unprepared, poorly planned region with little municipal oversight and coordination, and a population not used to emergencies, we'll get a lot more ugly, and maybe deadlier urband and suburan disasters in America in the future.

Here's a video of what happens when people venture out in the South with no snow tires on roads that haven't not been sanded and plowed.




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