Yesterday the world watched in horror as Atlanta shut down completely because of a little snow. Atlanta's politicians promptly blamed everyone else, even though they were elected to take responsibility for these kinds of things. Today, professional meteorologists fired back:
"The mayor and the governor got on TV yesterday and said all this wasn't expected, and that's not true," [meteorologist Al] Roker said Wednesday on [NBC's] TODAY [Show].
Roker and other meteorologists pointed out that the weather service issued its warning for metro Atlanta at 3:38 a.m. Tuesday — meaning "they were warned about it, and they should have been prepared for it," Roker said. "It's a shame. It really is."
"It absolutely breaks my heart," said Jim Cantore, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel.
"There are certainly chances that you take with this inexact science of forecasting a winter storm warning," Cantore said Wednesday. But this time, "the National Weather Service was absolutely spot-on with this."
In other words, Georgian politicians tried the Bilandic Defense and failed. (So did Bilandic, if you recall.)
Note to the South: this is one of those occasions when government could have helped, if you'd funded it.