Snow Days and the South

How the South deals with bad cold weather always boggles me. It's not that the city shuts down when snow falls or when we have an ice storm. From a pragmatic point of view, there's no point in investing in the equipment the city would need to deal with it for what amounts to a week or so of real use per year. I can get behind that decision. It makes sense to hunker down and just wait for it all to melt.

What I don't get is the preparation cycle. The way it is supposed to work is that there is a weather prediction. The powers that be watch the weather develop and make the best decision for the current situation. In the meantime, residents prep their houses and pantries for the next couple of days. The weather either comes or it doesn't, but generally in a few days down here the temperature comes up and everything melts off. The big danger down here are power outages generally, but even so, the weather usually shifts quickly.

What happens though tends to be a weird multi storm cycle of under-response and over-response. So, weather is predicted and the city shuts down. However, in this scenario the weather isn't as bad as predicted and we all could have been in work/school. Winter continues and work continues until a new storm is predicted. This storm looks worse in all the radar than the last, but because the last one turned out to be nothing, the schools all stay open and we all get trapped in horrible road conditions as the schools shut down midday. Bad weather happens then melts and in the next storm prediction and this one gets and over-response because the last one was so awful.

In the meantime, every weather prediction is met with Atlanta residents stocking up with more food than they'd need in a week particularly hitting things like bread and milk.

I don't get it.