Of snow and driving

Here is this morning's balcony panorama at sunrise.

I learned an important lesson: don't mess with the default focal length and focal length multiplier settings in Hugin Panorama Creator unless you know what the hell you're doing, or you'll get something like this:
Yeah.

Speaking of not knowing what the hell you're doing, if you live in Atlanta, and don't know how to drive in snow and/or ice, STAY THE HELL HOME. Really. Read a book, nap, play cards, clean the house, drink yourself into a coma, whatever. BUT STAY HOME.



From Sunday, January 9, 2011, the first day of our current Snowpocalypse 2011 episode, this is a quick video of one of a dozen or so cars driving the wrong way in I-85, between Shallowford and Clairmont in Atlanta. Yep: just turned around and drove the wrong way, apparently to a place where they could illegally cut over to the frontage road. Literally hundreds of cars were abandoned on the freeway, many on the sides, but a number just parked in traffic lanes. Many were turned off, dark inside, no lights, no occupants.

Where do those people go?

Full-sized tractor-trailers jackknifed, and sliding off the road. I thought you all were supposed to be professional drivers? (Hot Tip: meth doesn't keep you from sliding if you don't know how to drive on snow.)

Really, people: you knew this storm was coming for days. Nowhere you had to go in your rear wheel drive sedan or truck was that important. And if you do happen to drive an SUV with alltime AWD, but still don't know how to drive in snow or ice, refer to the paragraph above, and STAY HOME.

In my SUV, with true 4WD, the 20 miles from Lawrenceville to midtown Atlanta took an hour and a half, and would have taken much longer if I was driving like most of the chuckleheads on the freeway. At no point did I feel out of control, or slide, or skid. I spent most of the time avoiding other drivers, though certain stretches of 85 were delightfully (and a little creepily) empty:



At the risk of sounding like the bozo that NPR always manages to interview to respond to a snowstorm in the south by saying something like "Well, uh-huh, in North Dakota, we call that summer", this was NOT bad winter weather for driving. For much of the northern part of the country, it was a very average, even light, snowfall. The problem wasn't the snow, it was the drivers.

Oh, yeah, and: Confidential to Atlanta metro area drivers: don't drive with your emergency flashers on UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY HAVE AN EMERGENCY. Not knowing how to drive in snow is NOT an EMERGENCY. Driving slow is NOT AN EMERGENCY. We SEE you fine: you're driving a big dumb car or big dumb truck, and the visibility is approximately a half mile. It sort of dilutes the point of flashers if you are just toolin' along with them on, like all the other idiots on the freeway.

We're still in close to a state of weather siege in Atlanta, with public schools and many businesses closed, and glare ice all over the roads. The City of Atlanta is implementing its usual snow and ice mitigation program: wait until it goes away on its own. Which I'm fine with: I've been walking and biking on it, and enjoying the quiet streets. Oh, and getting the crap cut out of my face by my glasses in an iceball fight at Piedmont Park. (It's all fun and games until you have multiple lacerations and a black eye from a single nasty iceball assault.) You can email me directly if you want to see pictures.

Okay, snow day #4 in a row or not, back to work. (Really.)