The Marietta Daily Journal – Lee School work traffic turned loose impeding work crews

MARIETTA — Cobb Chairman Tim Lee didn’t expect a five-hour drive home when he arrived in downtown Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon for an awards gala.

But when he emerged from the Georgia Trend banquet at the Georgia Aquarium, attended also by Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, he found a metro Atlanta highway system that was gridlocked and learned Cobb’s streets were also overwhelmed by a mass exodus of workers and school children trying to beat the snow storm home.

Very few won that race.

“Everybody that had left their home in the morning, scattered, left their office or wherever they were all at the same time across the entire region,” Lee said. “It seemed like every office, every company, everybody that had a kid, everybody got on the roads all at the same time. It was just pure congestion.”

Snow began to fall in Cobb at about 10:10 a.m. on Tuesday, but Lee said it wasn’t until early afternoon that he realized the storm would be more than what he planned for.

“(Meteorologists) were telling us as it was happening,” Lee said. “It’s not like we were given a whole lot of warning.”

Initial forecasts, Lee said, predicted that areas north of Interstate 20 would just see a light dusting of snow, but that quickly proved false as 2 to 2.5 inches fell across the metro area on Tuesday.

via The Marietta Daily Journal – Lee School work traffic turned loose impeding work crews.