I got an out-of-office note from someone in Dallas yesterday afternoon, and the general consensus around here is that they’re nuts:
*I will be out of the office this afternoon due to the winter advisory storm. *
Yesterday’s weather report for Dallas:
Tonight: Mostly cloudy with a chance of flurries in the evening…then mostly clear after midnight. Breezy…colder. Lows in the lower 20s. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph becoming west 10 to 15 mph after midnight. Wind chill readings zero to 10 above zero.
Breezy? Flurries? Only a chance of them? Wind chill is above zero? This person’s probably fled the office and went to the grocery store to stock up on canned goods, candles and bottled water and trying to figure out how they’ll survive the big storm.
My cohorts in Minneapolis were all wishing their weather could be so balmy.
Yeah, that’s pretty much a typical winter forecast in Minnesota. We don’t really hear about wind chill unless it’s below zero, and even then it’s not that big of a deal unless it’s, say, 20 or 30 below.
My husband and I were laughing hysterically at the national news this morning. They were making a huge deal about this snowstorm. They had a newscaster on and she actually measured the snow and came up with a whopping … get this … six inches! That was when the giggling started. Then she said that in some places while they were driving around, the drifts were big enough that they came into the car when she opened the door. Oh, my. That’s when I fell off the couch laughing. I’ve plowed through bigger drifts in a Dodge Shadow. In all seriousness though, do they have snowplows down south? If not, I can see how it would be difficult to get around. Up nort’, we’re prepared for those sorts of things so it makes it much easier.
But in all fairness, we are prepared for it. In my 15 years working in the Colorado Mountains, and driving over the continental divide each way, I have missed exactly 2 days of work due to vicious storms.
Mostly because I’m the only house on the road and get plowed last. If the snow is over 2 feet, I’m cautious because I don’t want to be stuck on the road when they plow it. Screws up everything.
I haven’t read what happened in Dallas yesterday, but often when a system like this goes through, Dallas gets ice storms, and you can’t drive on that stuff, I don’t care how much of a Yankee you are.
I don’t know about Dallas, but I do know that in several southern sorts of places I’ve lived, they don’t. I guess it’s a lot of money when you might need them every three or four years.
Mostly, they just tell people to stay home. Here, last winter when there was it sleeted, they were closing freeways every which way. That may not be such a bad idea seeing as nobody here has any practice driving in ice or snow, and apparently nobody knows to slow the hell down.
Hell, even a little rain sends us Texans sliding all over the road. I don’t care how good a driver YOU are, if you come down here and there is any kind of winter precipitaion, FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, stay off the roads, else someone in a ginormous Ford 4X4 will plow right over your yankee ass. Laugh all y’all want though, any excuse to stay home from work is a good excuse.
I kind of guessed as much. Around here, snow removal/salt/sand takes up a good chunk of city and county budgets. But I can see how it wouldn’t make sense to have that kind of equipment just sitting around waiting for a very occasional snowy day.
We get plenty of ice here too; just had some earlier this week (my co-worker was without power for 12 hours Monday night). The worst is when you get a nice layer of ice and then snow pack on top of it.
As a long-time resident of the Dallas area, I can add a few things.
For the most part, we don’t get snow, we get ice: freezing rain that falls as water and then hits the road and instantly forms a layer of ice. It makes the roads just look wet, but they’re really slicker than warm goose snot. This is the so-called “black ice.”
We’re not really equipped to handle winter precipitation, road-wise. We have sand trucks but not near as many as northern climes. We don’t have any snow plows. We don’t ever salt roads. Nobody here owns snow tires or chains. We don’t get a lot of practice driving on winter roads. And I’ll admit it, we have a lot of folks that just don’t get driving on slick roads.
The weathermen here are, to say the least, fucking nuts. Ok, maybe not nuts, but they are certainly doom criers. If there’s ANY prospect of winter precipitation, they’ll preempt prime-time shows to go on and on about how bad it’s going to be and how the city will come screaching to a halt. Some people haven’t realized yet they’re full of shit and react to their apocalyptic forecasts by stocking up on water and going home early. Some people just want to go home early.
That all being said, I was in Maine a few years ago, and the people on the radio were talking about how hot it was going to be and how everyone should take it careful and not exert themselves, drink plenty of water, stay indoors, etc. The projected high for the day? 93. In Dallas, it’s 93 in May, and we don’t all die. It’s all about what you’re used to and prepared for.
I had a post all written up, but I guess the hamsters were hungry.
Anyway, yeah- ice is really, really bad in Texas. Several years ago in Austin, I got stuck in my apartment by an ice storm. I mean stuck- I was at the top of a not-too-large hill, and I couldn’t even walk out- the ice was just too slick. Now imagine trying to drive on that…
Us northerners get plenty of ice too, usually towards February and March when we have a week of warm weather before it gets cold again. There have been plenty of times where I fell on my ass walking out to my car so I could then drive to work. I just tell myself that my car has all wheel-drive, snow tires, and all sorts of fancy gizmos my legs don’t have, so it will handle better.
I think the standard equipment around here is city or county dump trucks fitted with some kind of sand-spreading apparatus when the weather’s bad, so that the trucks can do dual-duty.
I seriously doubt that a snowplow is in commission anywhere within 100 miles of D/FW; after all, we get at most 2-3 days a year with any kind of ice or snow.
And, like Turek said, it’s all about what you’re accustomed to. When I was in Leavenworth, KS a couple of years ago, weather that would have shut down any Texas city was nothing remarkable.
Then again, I suspect 110 degree highs in the summer would absolutely screw somewhere like Vermont up, while here in D/FW, it’s SOP.
I once got safely to work only to not be able to get in the front door. The sidewalk, which has a slight slant to it, was so icy that every time I took step, I slid all the way back down to the curb. I hope nobody saw it, but if someone did I’m sure it was quite amusing. I finally was able to get in the back door but it wasn’t easy.
Dallasite here. I didn’t leave the house yesterday. I sat in my home office, connected up the laptop to the company network, and worked from home. We got about an inch of freezing rain the night before and the temperatures were still sub-freezing, which means it was still ice on the roads, especially bridges and overpasses. A few years ago we got a “bad” storm which iced most of the area. I drove up to work(before I got a work-issued laptop) and in the 2 mile drive I saw no less than four cars which had gone off the road. I nearly slid myself and I am a very cautious driver.
Dallas residents just don’t know how to drive on icy roads. We don’t get practice, we don’t buy all-weather tires, and heaven knows we don’t own chains/studs. Some neighbors are from minnesota and they feel perfectly comfortable driving when we’ve had an inch of ice and it’s still coming down, but I’m not, and enough other people on the road are much worse than I am. The city does not maintain extensive sanding/salting infrastructure. They’ll hit the highways and some of the major streets, but that’s it. Driving on ice in Dallas is something best avoided, even though it is pretty safe if you’re careful about your driving and route.
Some years ago there was a news/weather clip of a reporter standing alongside an off ramp (I think) somewhere around Dallas. As he was telling everyone how dangerous the driving conditions were, behind him there was a rear-end accident.
Then another.
Then another.
And they kept on coming.
I wouldn’t’ve been surprised if the news crews’ own lights didn’t contribute to starting the ‘domino effect.’
I must take issue with “Dallas Dopers - bad weather or are they a wimp?”, gotpasswords. That’s just wrong. I am so dismayed when someone says that Dallas people are “a wimp”. So I’ll just say this once: Dallasites are “wimps”. Plural, dammit!
I am from Detroit, MI area & I was there when the storm was coming in. It was 80 degrees the day before at noon. It was 40 that evening & pouring rain. It was suggested to me that changing my flight out to the next morning was a good idea, so I did. I was delayed 45 minutes because they had to de-ice the plane. The flight I was originally scheduled to be on that evening was delayed 4 hours before they left the gate. For once, I made the right choice.
The one thing to remember is that the roads here are designed differently. You wouldn’t have a high five or an intersection like 183 and 161 in a climate which had ice and snow often.
I went into work on Thursday. Almost no one had an ice scraper to scrape the ice from their windows when they left that night.
I agree with all of this, and let me add a few things. First, some cites. Here is the High Five. The rise on some of these large bridges is probably over 100 feet above the road below. Slide off that and you’re just toast. 183 (Airport Freeway) at 161. Also for your consideration, check out part of downtown. Here’s a quote which should send chills down the spine of any of our northern-living bretheren. “I-45/US75 on the eastern side of downtown is entirely elevated.” The whole freaking thing is nothing but ice when we get a bad storm. I’d say about 40-60% of our MAJOR freeway interchanges are composed of HUGE ramps which arc way up(100+ feet) and then come back down after probably a half mile of bridgework.
Now, some other factors. The single biggest one, lack of practice on icy roads, has already been mentioned, and bears repeating. Still, there are other significant differences which make Dallas an objectively more difficult and dangerous place to drive in during our few days of winter weather each year. Rear-wheel drive vehicles are common. Pickup trucks are probably the biggest percentage here, but a suprising number of cars are RWD as well. Traction control and All-Wheel-Drive are simply not available here. Automakers divide the country up into market segments, and certain trim levels are shipped to certain segments, and not to others. Case in point, a friend of mine, grew up in Dallas and has now moved back, spent a few years in Colorado(Boulder to be precise). She got used to a AWD vehicle and the traction control which came standard on the vehicles there. She was also flabbergasted to know there were cars which had A/C as an option as opposed to being standard. In Dallas it is just a simple fact of life that vehicle lines which include AWD in Colorado or Minnesota just won’t have the AWD in a Dallas dealership. Want all-weather tires? Studs? Chains? Tough, they’re not on the shelves. In areas with winter weather driving for longer periods of the year all this stuff is so common people don’t even think about it. Still, all of those things add to the danger of driving in Dallas during winter weather.
I am from the Louisiana/East Texas area with a mother from Dallas/Fort Worth. I now live in New England and I lived in Vermont in record snow year 1996 driving the same truck I used to drive to see Grandma and back in Dallas in 1991. That Texas ice was worse than only one thing I have seen here. It is what Northerners cause black ice and the 18 wheelers jackknife all over the place blocking the interstates for hours with no way to get around. A 4 hour drive was 18 hours and I never want to do that again. I did multiple 360’s and got stuck many times. Imagine that there will not be ANY salt and NO snowplow is going to help you. Just black ice everywhere you go. Nobody can drive it well with conventional tires and they aren’t being pussies.
Texans love to tempt death with crazy road stunts. That is what those big vehicles are for but even that is too much. The same thing goes for other areas that are warm and humid and don’t get a lot of snow. Inexperience is a small piece of it but it isn’t the whole thing. Their roads get really bad and they stay that way with nobody to help.
