Day 20 - Atlanta

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Well what can I say. The snow storm certainly arrived. Looking out the window to the courtyard below looks a lot different than yesterday. About 3-4 inches of snow fell which does not sound like much but believe me it is !

The whole state of Georgia has come to a stand still. It’s not much better in Mississippi or Alabama or even Tennessee. This area does get snow flurries and averages less than one inch of snow for the whole of winter. This is one of heaviest dumps of snow on record here. It’s even snowing in South Carolina on the beach !

To give you a sense, when you head outside there are very few cars driving around on a Monday morning, all the schools are closed, and you cannot tell where the road and footpath meet it is just a blanket of snow. It is so cold that cars have ice fragments on the bumper bars that are razor sharp in appearance.

We could not get out of the Hotel but the kids wanted to play in the snow which was quite fluffy initially but through the day it started to freeze and became very icy.

On TV every channel was talking about the chaos and the road accidents for those stupid enough to try driving. I thought about getting on a train as the station is only 50 metres away across the road and it is all underground and there is an area in downtown with shopping, dining etc all underground but it was all closed as no-one could get anywhere. I was reflecting how good it was that I had dropped off our car yesterday !

I decided I’d try and find a convenience store somewhere nearby so I ventured out for a walk. It had stopped snowing but there was talk of freezing rain falling later which is where it rains and because the ground temperature is so cold that as soon as the rain touches the ground, cars, buildings etc it becomes frozen ice.

I walked a couple of blocks and found a Shell Gas Station open, so armed with an empty backpack I filled up on supplies. TV weather forecasts are saying temperature will be below zero at least until Saturday so nothing will be melting at all. I managed to find some soups in my shopping trip for lunch to heat up which was great.

I took a few photo snaps outside, and I was careful to look out for cars as it was slippery walking around and the cars had very little control. I could hardly believe how a town could change overnight.

We were lucky that this hotel offered room service for dinner which was OK (chicken, squash and green beans).

It’s down to minus 2 tonight but much colder with the wind chill factor. The snow has moved on but with the weather being so cold they are saying the roads will be even more dangerous tomorrow as the snow freezes, and all the schools and business’ are going to be closed again tomorrow.

Not sure what we will do. Whilst it is exciting to see the snow around I’m a little concerned that the airport is mostly closed with 1,000 flights cancelled today (Monday) and we are due to fly to Los Angeles on Wednesday.

They are not bothering to clear the roads as they just don’t have the equipment down here to do that (as compared to say New York or Chicago where the city gets back to work as soon as the snow storm passes by).

Finished the day by watching the BCS College Football Championship between Auburn University (from nearby Alabama) and Oregon. Auburn won a closely contested game played in Arizona. A lot of the Auburn fans cold not get to the game due to the snow here.

Well the weather finally caught us. We've had very good weather to date. Let's hope we can get away to LA on Wednesday where it is nice and sunny and around 20 degrees.

We will try and get to downtown tomorrow if we can. Luke & I have tickets to an NBA Basketball game tomorrow night which we hope will go ahead (assuming Milwaukee Bucks starring Aussie Andrew Bogut can fly in to Atlanta to play the Hawks).

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