RALEIGH, N.C. – The snow-and-ice storm that has shut down much of the South slowly rolled toward the Northeast on Tuesday, revealing a regional culture clash along the way.
Southerners seemed resigned to waiting out such winter headaches as slick roads and paralyzed airports. But people from Ohio to New York, who face up to a foot of snow in their third blast of winter in as many weeks, are already putting pressure on state and local governments to spare them from travel tangles and snow-choked roads.
Across the South, schools and government offices were closed for a second day, and travelers remained stranded at airports and bus stations. Road crews ill-equipped for the winter blast struggled to keep streets clear. Motorists sat for hours on slippery highways.
Despite the inconvenience, Southerners confronted the storm’s aftermath with patience — and a certain amount of wonder.
Lynn Marentette, a school psychologist who lives south of Charlotte, stayed home after classes were canceled. She’s been too busy catching up with friends on Facebook and watching children sled down the hill near her home to touch the stack of paperwork on her desk.
“It is a beautiful, beautiful day out there,” she said. “I have some paperwork and some things I’ve really put off doing, but how often do you have a chance to enjoy the snow?”
Nobody seemed to be complaining much at Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, either.
“It’s a once-in-a-decade event. There is no reason to prepare for it. It is not a wise spending of funds,” said Brent Taylor, an executive for the United Way who was pulling a sled carrying his 5-year-old daughters, Elie and Grace, near Chattanooga.
Taylor said he could not get the family’s cars out of the driveway, but they were enjoying the time together.
In Chattanooga, the ice and up to 10 inches of snow was the biggest accumulation in almost two decades.
The city is better equipped than many in the South, where many communities have few snow plows, if any. Hamilton County has 11 salt or brine trucks with blades and three road graders.
“The last time we had this much snow was 1993,” said Bill Tittle, the county’s emergency management chief. “You can’t have that much equipment just sitting around for 18 years.”
The South’s experience offered a preview of what’s in store for states from Ohio to New England, a region already tired of winter after digging out from two storms in recent weeks.
Those wintery blasts included a Christmas weekend blizzard that provoked anger in New York City and New Jersey over the slow cleanup.
“It’s not that the city can’t handle it, it’s the leadership,” said John Man, 32, a pizza cook in Brooklyn who said that after the Dec. 26 blizzard it took him 45 minutes to walk a little over a mile to his job.
“This time we’re only getting a foot, and hopefully they’ve learned from last time,” he said.
New York City and its suburbs could get 8 to 14 inches of snow, with reduced visibility and wind gusts up to 35 mph, forecasters said. Long Island could get as much as 15 inches. In New England, forecasters were predicting up to a foot across most of Connecticut and the Boston area.
In Atlanta, trucker Vernon Cook, 67, of Myrtle Beach, S.C., had been sitting idle on an interstate ramp in Atlanta for almost 24 hours in a long line of tractor trailers that couldn’t move because of ice on the road.
“I’ve been a trucker for 46 years and have seen nothing like this,” said Cook, who was hauling a load of synthetic rubber from Beaumont, Texas, to Fayetteville, N.C. “I’ve always been stuck for a little short time, even in Chicago. Georgia DOT is not working, not on this road.”
But elsewhere, people seemed accepting, and in some cases cheerful, about the weather canceling plans for school, work and errands.
Atlanta city Councilman Kwanza Hall spent much of Monday sledding and shoveling alongside his neighbors. He said many of his constituents didn’t mind staying in for two days during the workweek.
“We’re very fortunate this time because the storm didn’t knock most of the power out,” Hall said. “So you still have warmth, lights and television. You just can’t go anywhere.”
Passengers stranded at an Atlanta bus station were helped by good Samaritans, including a woman who made the 15-mile drive in from Smyrna, Ga., to drop off sandwiches.
Valencia Dantzler, 39, of Chicago, had been stuck at the station since Sunday and took matters into her own hands: She called the McDonald’s corporate office and arranged for a downtown restaurant to bring food to the passengers.
“He brought like 150 double cheeseburgers and fries and salad. We ended up running out of food,” she said.
Officials know that can-do spirit isn’t going to last forever, though, and the effects of the storm are likely to linger for days because continued cold temperatures will slow the melting of ice and snow until the weekend in some places.
Roads remained dangerous throughout the South as police responded to hundreds of calls for help. Airports were also affected, including more than 1,500 canceled flights at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest.
Some school systems and local governments decided early Tuesday they would remain closed on Wednesday, a cautious move for a storm already blamed for 11 deaths and many more injuries.
“You’re at the mercy of Mother Nature,” North Carolina Department of Transportation spokeswoman Greer Beaty said. “We need sunshine.
Overcast is not helpful. The weather isn’t going to help us at all until we get some warmer temperatures.”