Snow began falling on the Southeast on Tuesday afternoon. Scorn began falling by dusk.<\/p>\n
Winter Storm Leon and his two-inch snowfall caused traffic jams on the major highways that lasted through the night and into the next two days. Schoolchildren spent the night on their buses. Shoppers slept in the aisles of a CVS pharmacy<\/a>\u00a0and in other retail establishments. Jackknifed semis blocked all lanes<\/a>\u00a0of some interstates. Many cars were abandoned by drivers who sought nearby shelter. Georgia\u2019s governor Nathan Deal deployed the National Guard to help with the strandees. At least 13 people have died<\/a>\u00a0in the region from storm-related mishaps and traffic accidents. (I live next door to Atlanta in Decatur, Georgia, by the way, and we\u2019re all fine here.)<\/p>\n All over the nation, but especially in parts that see several feet of snow each winter, like New England and Chicago, people thought all this misery was hilarious. I won\u2019t provide links to corroborate this; you can verify it in the comments section of any online news story about the storm. Or by watching Wednesday\u2019s The Daily Show<\/em>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll remember all this mirth the next time the Fahrenheit scale tops 100 in Chicago and people start dropping dead of heat stroke, or a small (to Atlantans) rainstorm sweeps cars off the roads in Las Vegas. There are good reasons why Southern cities aren\u2019t equipped to deal with this kind of weather; mainly it\u2019s because it wouldn\u2019t be cost-effective to maintain the infrastructure needed<\/a>\u00a0to deal with it. It\u2019s cheaper to just shut down the region and take a day or two off than to maintain the reserves of salt and sand and plows. Also, snow doesn\u2019t remain snow in Georgia; it turns almost immediately into ice. I\u2019d surmise even most Northerners wouldn\u2019t cope well with skating rinks on hillsides, no matter how many drive wheels are under their cars or how many of those wheels are shod in snow tires.<\/p>\n There are more specific reasons why this week\u2019s misadventure was even worse than usual. The blame battle<\/a>\u00a0is well underway, and it\u2019s probably too soon to start heating up the tar and feathers, except maybe to provide added traction on remaining slick roads.<\/p>\n I wouldn\u2019t have thought there\u2019d be a skeptic\u2019s angle to this story, which shows how na\u00efve I am. First, on the there\u2019s-hope-for-humanity front, within hours after the trouble began a Facebook group was established, SnowedOutAtlanta<\/a>, with the mission of connecting stranded people with their loved ones or finding shelter, or helping rescuers find and help the stranded. Soon there were several spinoff groups, as well: SnowedOutSouthAtlanta<\/strong>, SnowedOutEastCobb<\/strong>, SnowedOutAtlantaPets<\/strong>, etc. I haven\u2019t presented most of those as links because I think they\u2019re going to be shut down soon, since they\u2019re no longer needed. As the story evolved over the days, people used them less for emergencies and more to find out which roads had been cleared and whence their cars had been towed. Similar information could be found on Twitter via the hashtag #SnowedOutAtlanta. I imagine there are similar groups available for other cities affected by Leon.<\/p>\n Bravo to everyone involved in those groups! But almost as soon as they were founded, people began posting to them asking for money. Some were truly in storm-created need, but others were scam artists taking advantage of a new opportunity. To the credit of the members of these Facebook groups, the scammers found little success. Phony accounts were identified and deleted. Attempts to con people were deleted.<\/p>\n There are also stories of heroism and scoundreldom, which will be verified or debunked over time. I think it\u2019s too soon to pronounce on most of them. We\u2019re still sorting everything out.<\/p>\n It wouldn\u2019t have been a national story if conspiracy nuts hadn\u2019t come out to play, as they did after the Boston Marathon bombing<\/a>. This time they\u2019re claiming that our storm was made of \u201cchemical snow\u201d or \u201cplastic snow,\u201d and that it won\u2019t melt. Here\u2019s a typical example, from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dSRKwUCuIKo<\/p>\n And here\u2019s one more local to me:<\/p>\n