Greater Atlanta area

This is a scene from Suwanee, Georgia, where we spent Sunday night. On Saturday Georgia was hit with tornadoes and wind storms, and then thunder snow. Thunder snow, the meteorologists said, is a rare event where a thunder storm slams against a cold front and drops snow. The greater Atlanta area got three inches of it, and left it to melt on its own. Exit and entrance ramps were ice and snow covered, but I-85 was clear -- and stopped. It took five hours to travel 125 miles; part of that time we were completely stopped on the interstate. Our breakfast coffee created an "emergency situation," so we pulled off once hoping for gas and a restroom near Anderson, where it took us 45 minutes to go three miles, but there was no electricity and nothing open. The situation became dire and we made a second attempt at the next exit. Then we did what several other motorists did -- used the back of a closed gas station for a rest room. We managed to find more privacy than a couple desperate motorists on the interstate itself; a couple guys left their cars for the side of the road and it wasn't hard to figure out that they weren't just looking for the cause of the stoppage.
All the way from Atlanta to I-81 cars were strewn along the sides of the road like toy cars strewn across a playroom. A couple cars were hanging with their front wheels over guard rails, just inches from going on over. A couple tractor trailers had jack knifed as well. We figured the slow-down was because of wreckers pulling vehicles out of the ditches, but never really learned the cause for certain.
We expected to be home in Broadway by 3 p.m., but didn't arrive till about 6:30. But we'll never forget where we were during the rare weather events in Georgia in 2009.