Whenever the Atlanta forecast calls for snow, I brace myself. Not for the onslaught of ice and wintry weather but for the insults.
The subtle and not-so-subtle put-downs come from recent transplants and people across the country convinced — even a decade after the “snowpocalypse” that brought the city to a halt — that Georgians are a bunch of snowflakes.
We are still living down that searing “Daily Show” sketch from 2014 in which Jon Stewart suggested we haven’t considered carpooling since Miss Daisy was being driven around by her chauffeur.
Or when he highlighted the irony of then-Gov. Nathan Deal saying “There is no one in this room who could have predicted the degree or the magnitude of the problem that developed” — even though the Weather Channel is headquartered in Atlanta and meteorologists had accurately predicted the 2 inches of snow that dropped on the metro area that day in late January 2014.
So, last week, when predictions of an inch of snow turned into 3½ inches in some parts of town, I was ready for the jokes I knew were coming my way from fellow Chicagoans.
“It doesn’t really look like much snow,” my best friend from high school said Friday as she watched videos on social media featuring Atlanta residents commenting about staying inside.
This is a standard response from Midwesterners to a snowstorm that drops anything less than 3 feet of snow.
I assured her there was more than an inch of snow. I took photos of the streets blanketed in white and my partially buried car and sent them to her.
I sent snaps of kids sledding and the occasional car driving down my street, intent on proving we aren’t a bunch of wimps. She reluctantly rescinded her statement, but I knew there was snark in her heart.
Still, we made it through another snowstorm, the most snow we’ve seen since 2018, and I think we did pretty well, or at least well enough to end the perception that Georgia is too incompetent to handle 3 to 4 inches of snow once or twice a year.
There were a few hiccups this past weekend, including a mini snowmageddon that left about a dozen vehicles stuck in the snow on Old Snellville Highway in Lawrenceville.
Motorists spun out of control on roadways slick with ice. Thousands of residents lost power. Hundreds of flights were canceled at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. And, of course, there was the prestorm scramble for meat, bread, and milk at grocery stores.
To be fair, these are all mostly universal occurrences when there is a snowstorm, and not just in the South.
According to a friend in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, residents were also emptying shelves of perishable items (it’s the nonperishables you want) after a winter weather advisory predicted 3 to 5 inches of snow beginning Saturday night through late Sunday afternoon.
In 2017, Georgia meteorologist Marshall Shepherd, writing for Forbes magazine, tried to uncover the history behind our scramble for food in the face of a storm.
With the help of colleagues, he traced the trend back to New Englanders and the blizzard of 1978. Another colleague noted how logical thought tends to fly out of the window whenever we face risks such as severe weather. Snow may be scary, but we are confident we can whip up a meal from milk and bread.
In 2025, Georgia authorities said they learned important lessons from 2014.
Gov. Brian Kemp told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that we got ahead of the storm this time and that it is better to be overprepared than caught off guard.
Before the storm, we brined 20,000 miles of road, used more than 770 tons of salt and mobilized more than 300 snowplows to clear the streets.
It all worked out, but this won’t be the last time we get a snow event.
According to my colleagues at Politically Georgia, state lawmakers will begin debating updates to the state’s emergency policies in the legislative session, which began Monday. Already, there have been calls to create an Office of Resilience and update the 911 system.
While we’re at it, I hope local governments will also consider addressing some of the deeper unresolved issues that led to 2014’s snowpocalypse, such as Atlanta’s car-centric culture and lack of a truly regional transit system.
The first snow I experienced in Atlanta was in 2007, and I chuckled as I coasted down the highway. I was the only person on the road, but I’ve lived here for 20 years now and I understand the reasons for a certain amount of caution.
It’s easier to stay home than find yourself stranded on the roadways. No one wants to live through another snowpocalypse.
But last week, I saw so many Atlanta residents outside — skiing, sledding, making snow angels, building snowmen and walking dogs.
That’s not a city that is scared of snow; that is a city that is learning to embrace it.
It felt like an indication that maybe we have gotten past our trauma of 2014. And if we can get past it, the rest of the country should get past it too.
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and X (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
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