When snow and ice hits Georgia, we are much better prepared now than we were during Snowmagdon in 2014.
Severe Weather Unit 2 Chief Meteorologist Brad Nitz Examines changes that can be made to prevent nightmares from recurring.
Nearly everyone in metro Atlanta has had the experience of being stuck in traffic for hours or having to camp out at a store overnight during a snowstorm.
But now state and local agencies are using new technology, better equipment and deploying personnel more efficiently.
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“We have been trapped for almost 24 hours,” one woman said in a statement. Channel 2 Action News The story takes place during a snowstorm in January 2014.
On January 24, 2014, thousands of Georgians were stranded on icy roads for 24 hours or more.
“We tried to track a few incidents, including a stranded school bus, but we could never get anywhere because the roads were blocked and the snow was falling,” said Ross Cavett, a former Channel 2 reporter and now Cobb County communications director.
But today, Cobb County and the state of Georgia are better prepared to handle the ice and snow.
“We went from four vehicles to 14 vehicles dealing with snow. We do pretreatment now. We’ve never done that before,” Cavett said.
Cobb County holds an annual winter weather drill where crews make sure tracks and plows are ready for the road.
In addition to the new salt warehouse, Cobb is using technology to do his job more efficiently.
“We’ve digitized those routes as crews are actually out treating after pre-treatment and activity begins,” said Drew Raessler, director of the Cobb County Department of Transportation.
Photos taken by Georgia residents in northern Georgia and Atlanta during a snowstorm on January 29, 2014. Snow began falling around noon Tuesday and spread across north Georgia, blanketing the ground, closing schools and businesses and blocking roadways.
The local transportation department pre-treats and cleans the surface streets.
The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) is responsible for nearly 50,000 lane miles of state and interstate highways in Georgia.
“I can squeeze 11,000 gallons an hour out of one of these machines,” said one GDOT employee.
The machine purchased five years ago mixes salt and water to create brine.
“We can adjust the correct salinity required for the brine to ensure we get an efficient batch,” said GDOT spokesperson Natalie Dale.
Currently, the state has more than 1.6 million gallons of saltwater stored in tanks. By comparison, production in 2014 was just over 70,000 gallons.
Now, if ice forms on a bridge, overpass or road, crews can add so-called steroids to the brine.
“Calcium chloride would be a chemical additive that would melt the ice very quickly,” Dyer said.
In the two years since Snowmagdon, GDOT began using 57 sensors of road weather information to figure out how best to respond.
“It can tell us about underground temperatures, surface temperatures, air temperatures. It can tell us that precipitation is occurring,” Dyer said.
GDOT has also innovatively added snow plows and pretreatment equipment that can be added to existing trucks, saving money.
“Foreman’s pickup truck can easily be equipped with plow blades in the front or a spreader in the back,” Dale said.
Communication and planning are now better with the hiring of a National Meteorologist.
Will Lankston ensures all state, local and federal agencies use the same forecasts from the National Weather Service.
“The fact that we were all working on the same score made it run much smoother,” Lankston said.
In January 2025, a snowstorm eerily similar to “Snowmagedon” put all Georgia’s plans and preparations to the test.
Several pieces of debris on the bridge were frozen.
“These are rare and far between compared to 2014, when there was massive chaos across the city,” Lankston said.
A key factor in Shermagleton was the simultaneous closure of businesses and schools, creating a traffic nightmare.
But in the wake of COVID-19, schools are now more likely to close because they have virtual options.
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