Trust me Steve, I checked before I made a statement like that, although I'm sure the summit wind chill is a bit lower
. Tonight is projected to be 10 in Marietta, my little burb of the ATL. Usually we'll have 2-3 snaps a winter with lows dipping in to the teens, but that's almost always a Canadian air/jet stream anomoly with no moisture. This heavy snow and trailing arctic air is a once-in-20-years type thing. The last one I can recall was a blizzard in 1993 - a foot-plus of snow, and a week or more to melt out.
My wife, a Minnesota native, was flabbergasted at that '93 event. That was also when she forever swore off trying to drive in Atlanta in snow/ice conditions. Minnesota is relatively flat, and has good treatment plans for secondary roads. Atlanta is hilly - steeply so, in the northern suburbs - and secondary roads are ignored by the DOT in a snow event. Hell, primary roads and some freeways are ignored. Yesterday, 48 hours after the snow had stopped falling, the DOT had only 5 lanes out of 16 open along I-75 near my hotel. Today 10 were open, but only beacuse of sunshine-melt and traffic flow.
The good news is that I managed to finally make it home from work this afternoon - no 5th night stranded!
