well, i wasn’t raining when i fell asleep last night about 10 pm. my how things change in 7.5 hours. by the time i woke up at 5:20 this morning it looked like a scene from monsoon wedding outside.

anyway, i steeled myself against the rain and threw my jacket on and headed out onto glenwood to wait on the marta #9. i hadn’t been outside four minutes before my foot was drenched from trying to cross the street.

i headed to five points to catch the northbound train and found out that marta was completely shutdown north-south between five points and lindbergh. i thought this must be because a tunnel was flooded but apparently it was unrelated.

marta was telling people over the loudspeaker they had a bus bridge set up but another marta rep was trying to get people to get on the #110 bus which runs up peachtree to midtown and then lenox. either way the scene at five points was utter chaos. i have travelled via marta long enough now to know that the system does not handle crisis well.

so i just walked back to the #9 bus, boarded it and headed home to telecommute.

how are the rest of you surviving the rainpocalyspe?

it’s snowing it atlanta. again.

sitting here in 30316 there has been noticeable snowfall for more than an hour now. this may be one of the craziest winters i have seen in atlanta. as you can imagine, stuff is already getting closed (h/t to 11 alive for this updated list.)

i am also relatively certain offices are emptying out and hartsfield is a zoo.

in spite of all that, i would really like to just take a moment to remind my northern friends of this.

thanks.

have a nice day.

maybe you haven’t heard. if not, i’ll clue you in, it just might maybe snow in atlanta today.

now this means many things in atlanta. it means schools are already closing, delta is most likely already cancelling flights and you should probably not head to the grocery store thinking you are going to find any bread, milk or toilet paper.

it also means that invariably a bunch of jack-asses who grew up in places like buffalo, chicago, wisconsin and other points north are going to start saying things like:

“geez. the entire city shuts down for like 1 inch of snow. back in wausheegan/lake winnepaupak/big rock candy mountain we WALKED to school if there was a foot of snow.”

or (said really snarky)

“OMG! two inches of snow. panic! panic! panic!”

or

“people in atlanta don’t know how to drive in the snow.”

this happens every single time there is winter weather in the forecast. so i have a message for my northern friends. THiS IS ATLANTA GEORGIA. IT’S IN THE SOUTH. in fact, we even have an absurd nickname for our city; HOT-FREAKING-LANTA.

WTF should we do? invest millions upon millions in snow plows and salt trucks for the two times a year we get one inch of snow? should we all fly to vermont every winter to learn how to drive in snow?

or maybe, just maybe, all you northerners should just STFU and let us have our fun.

maybe.

yeah, it’s cold. honestly in all the time i have lived in atlanta (two tours of duty totaling more than eight years) i cannot remember a stretch where it has been so cold for so long. in 2007 there were a few cold weekends running up to the ing georgia marathon that i can remember, but they always broke.

i surely cannot remember a cold spell like this, where every day it has been sub-30 for a substantial portion of the day. it’s been this way since friday and was 19 at the bus stop this morning.

it seems to that there really isn’t much for us atlantans to do about it except complain. oh and to all those northerners who like to look down their nose at us with their, “you don’t know what winter is like,” comments, well, maybe we don’t, and maybe if we lived in buffalo we wouldn’t be bitching.

but we don’t. our city’s nickname is hotlanta for pete’s sake.

so leave us alone.

and let’s hope it warms up soon. it looks like the high today is going to be FORTY. i might get out my swimsuit.

please let it me…please, please, please.

i woke up this morning (and i didn’t get myself a gun, but instead headed to the marta station) and i could feel to cool crispness that i associate with fall.

and oh dear god, i hope it is.

is it just me or has this summer been especially brutal with the humidity? maybe i’m only noticing it now because i am marathon training but damn has it taken it’s toll.

i know many of you love the summer with your beaches and outdoor festivals and what-not. as for me, i am ready for fall.

i am training right now for the 2009 marine corps marathon with the georgia chapter of team in training (which by the way is an incredible org and if you are thinking of trying an endurance event i highly recommend them.) i’ve trained for and run four marathons now, but this is my first time training for an early fall event. and what i have learned is that means i am training right through the heart of atlanta’s summer.

and it’s humid. damn humid.

actually i have been quite unprepared for how difficult it is to run long mileage in this humidity. the runs are draining, i sweat like crazy and no matter how much water i drink i can’t seem to get through the run without sweating out everything.

so how about it atlanta runners….those of you with lots of experience running through this humidity. do you have any advice for me? what tricks do you use to get through these dog days of august.

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

******WARNING SHAMELESS PLUG FOLLOWS*******

(that means stop reading if you are going to be offended by a shameless plug. don’t click the link if you don’t want to read it.)

(more…)

Arby’s getting guerrilla in their weekend efforts locally? That seems like big news.

The fact that WGCL advertisers their weather personality with just her first name? Dagmar-tastic.

More photos and MySpace profile of the raven-tressed Canadian, if you’re so inclined.

One of my trusted friends lives north of me near Cartersville, GA. He owns a large track of farm land in the vicinity.

Just after one of the major storms that rolled through the North West Metro area last week, he went outside to grab a quick look at any damage to his property. While outside – for just a moment – he looked up at the sky and thought he saw a bird. The bird seemed to be getting larger and larger. When “it” hit the ground, it turned out to be a 2×4 piece of lumber. Then he saw something else and it was a mattress in the air and it hit the ground not too far from him. Very quickly, a ton of stuff began to fall from the sky on to his property. Needless to say, he took cover.

No joke, he is for real and this was serious. A few moments later, other more “personal belongings” fell from the air. It turned out that the remnants of other people’s destroyed homes started raining down on his property – all sucked up by a tornado. Just amazing!

I thought his story was really out there and then I saw this story online: Tornado Blows Photo 130 Miles

It’s just all so amazing to me. I’m really hoping the Spring and Summer weather season is not going to an image of this incident. If so, we all need to dig bunkers NOW.

well, as i write this it appears that another strong storm is bearing down on douglasville and moving due east.  okay, THIS STORM IS HEADED TO DOWNTOWN IN TWELVE MINUTES.  LARGE HAIL AND ROTATION.

it is official. the national weather service confirmed that vine city, downtown and cabbagetown were hit by an f2 tornado with max winds of 120 mph. i certainly wasn’t exaggerating in the post i wrote from my blackberry last night. all the areas i thought were hit were.

andisheh at clfreshloaf must have had access to power and his camera with him, because his post is much more extensive than mine. check it out, he also has links to several pages of flickr photos.

one thing i will say having driven down dekalb avenue a few times today is that the city and it’s citizens seem to have their act together.  the king marta station is getting picked up (several of the big floor to ceiling windows blew out) and the trains were running.  it looked like work was going on at the cotton mill loft.  the post office near lenny’s was already being worked on, and the southeast auto warehouse, whcih imploded, was being picked up.

i am going to write about my personal experience over on my personal blog when i can get around to it, but right now it looks like i may need to go hide again.

how did the rest of you survive the storm?