Welcome to The Weather Scene segment! Each week here on Geek Alabama, The Weather Scene will feature weather related content. Editor / publisher Nathan Young loves weather related content. And this segment will feature something about the weather every week.
In the winter of 2014, the southeastern United States was blasted by two powerful winter storms in 14 days. Occurring within an abnormally cold winter due to the emergence of the polar vortex, the bitter cold temperatures, enhanced snowfall, and thick ice accumulations had severe consequences for southern major cities like Birmingham and Atlanta.
While the winter weather was accurately forecasted, local and state officials failed to gather and mobilize the necessary equipment to clear the roads, resulting in thousands of car accidents on major highways across the southeast. Today we’ll look at how the deviation of the polar vortex can cause major winter storms in more southerly latitudes, analyze the forecasts that were dispatched days before the first event, and come to understand how a few inches of snow shut down the entire city of Atlanta, in what is colloquially remembered as Snowmaggedon 2014.
