The local teevee news report had “team coverage” of our winter storm, and you’d think it was a blizzard the way they described it (see below) and the way it sent people running to the store and shut down Ashvegas. Businesses closed early and schools didn’t even bother to open. Schools closed again Thursday. All because we received .7 inches of snow. The world ended for an official recorded snowfall of .7 inches of snow. Sure a few places got an inch or two more of that, but that’s still not much.
What are we going to do when it really snows around here? The world clearly came to an end over a mere inch or two, so what’s going to happen when we actually get a real snow of 6 inches? God help us.
Anyway, here we go:
The blustery winter blast that brought bone-chilling cold and walloped the mountains, holding us in an icy grip while winter’s wrath pelted WNC with a mixed bag of precipitation and wind-chills
Did we use up all the cliches? Let me know, because I’d really like to get them out of the way. We’ve still got a lot of winter left.
Sheraldo and his Indiana Jones hat (now back in fashion what with the new moving coming out and all) posted his report from Madison County, noting that a “blinding snowfall pelted future I-26” early Tuesday, making it rough going for snow plows. “Blinding,” Sheraldo? Really? Sheraldo said cars packed some snow down into a slick sheet of ice. He talked to a woman who might have had a frozen pipe under her trailer.
Larry Blunt, wearing some odd girl-glasses, noted that many churches didn’t have services. He said the Blue Ridge Parkway closed. Then Mike Cuevas in the weather center said it would be windy and the wind chill at midnight would be below zero. Anybody out at midnight would have to be crazy.
Back outside, John Le followed around a guy in a wheelchair and gave us a lot of nat sound to help us feel how cold and brutal nd blizzard like the storm really was. The “extreme conditions” made downtown Ashvegas “ground-sub-zero,” Le said. Give. Me. A. Fracking. Break. Le, wearing a Sherlock Holmes cap, talked to people waiting for the bus. One woman said she lived in Alaska and this weather was worse than that, while a dude from Connecticut made fun of all us Southerners for being weather wimps.
Keeping with the team coverage, Charu told us how DOT prioritizes which roads are cleared first – the main roads first, then the secondary roads. She said Long Shoals Road (close to WLOS studios) and Tunnel Road were not top priority roads for DOT, but she didn’t really explain why roads like Long Shoals and Tunnel weren’t top priorities.
In other news…
A tree fell in Arden and hit a house on Forest Ridge Drive. No injuries.
Back on the team weather report…
WLOSers, midway through their weather report, told us that Haywood County out west actually got the most snow from the “storm” and that there were triple the number of emergency calls to dispatchers. Shouldn’t that have been the lead story? Heather Graf, who said he car wouldn’t start Wednesday morning, said most wrecks were on Interstate 40, and were caused by people driving too fast.
In other news…
Terrie Foster introduced us to Herbert Blake, the new police chief in Hooterville. Seemed like a nice guy.
10 Comments
Wake up people. It’s Asheville.
1) Generally speaking, we don’t get a lot of snow.
2) The region lacks in the equipment, man power and follow thru (knowledge?) for good snow removal.
3) 50% of the areas new population is from Florida, where 1 inch of snow IS catastrophic.
This is the way it is, and will be until global warming brings the ocean over the Piedmont (can’t wait for THAT to happen) and we are enjoying beach front property and I can finally buy that sailboat I can’t afford to dock out of town.
What IS more annoying than people ‘freaking out’ over .7 inches of snow is the same old tired ridicule brought on by the other 50% of our transplants who come from up north.
There’s I-26, don’t run over any hippies on the way out.
Here in Greensboro we riled up viewers with talk of snow, then got diddly squat. That’s when they sent me to *&^%$# West Jefferson to get up-close footage of The Blizzard that Ate the Blue Ridge. 320 miles later, I filled 90 seconds of television. Damn, I love a good snowgasm…
Normally I’d be rolling my eyes along with you, but I got my first snow day in five years at my current job, so I was pretty darn happy. I did end up working at home, although it was in my pajamas…and I hit the wine at about 1pm.
DUDE! I was so mad that the YWCA closed at 4 yesterday!!! There was barely anything on the ground!!! WIMPS! Then I had a chiropractor appointment this morning and they were closed, too!!! WTF?!?!?! Their parking lot was clear, too!
You’d think it was the Blizzard of ’08. Sheesh.
I lost control of my car twice yesterday on the way to the bank, nearly hitting a passing car. Today I couldn’t get up an ice-covered hill to get to my vet and had to park across the street.
It’s been a bitch to drive lately. It’s shady, hilly, icy and dangerous in some spots where I’ve been.
Call me a wimp, if wimp is the word from someone who doesn’t want to plow into a passing vehicle.
IMO it’s not stupid to go grocery shopping when even .7 inches of snow might make the roads in your neighborhood icy and dangerous the next day… (It IS annoying when everyone hits the stores at the same time, that I cannot deny.)
I’ve heard that roads in the South are more dangerous in winter than colder areas, because here snow doesn’t really pack, but melts and turns into ice. Makes sense to me after the 3 or 4 times I’ve slid on ice on the secondary roads near my house.
I’m surprised they didn’t do a report from an Ingles to show the "panicked shoppers."
rascal, welcome back!
hey suck, i was up and out the door Wednesday at 8 a.m. drove out of my neighborhood, down Leicester Hwy, over the Smoky Park Bridge, into town. not a problem. at all.
Hail, glad you made it safe. Sheraldo was describing conditions Wednesday am, fyi.
Dude, did you try and drive on 26 or 240 Tuesday night?
I did. It was fucking BLINDING.
You could not see four feet in front of your car. I had just gotten out of the late showing of Sweeney Todd, so around 11:30 when I hit the highway I was freaking out.
You couldn’t see anything. It was scary as hell.
Ash, you obviously didn’t leave your house yesterday.
Got back from Minneapolis just in time for "Snow Panic 2008". Glad to see you had the same reaction I did.
Di