In this blog, I document the events of the surprise snowstorm that hit central Alabama on Tuesday, January 28th, 2014. I have selected several defining pictures to show full size here at the beginning to capture the chaos caused by the storm and its aftermath. Below the full-sized pictures, I have included small thumbnails of some of the videos I uploaded to youtube. Below the videos, I have organized a long pictoral gallery that covers the entire week. There are a ton of pictures, but I recommend that you click on the first one to open a full-size window and then click the arrows or click the picture to advance from photo to photo. If you do that, then when you make it to the end of the

People walk down a completely empty three lane highway about 3 hours after it first started to snow

Tues, 1/28 @ 1:07PM – US Hwy 280 abandoned top of pass. People walk down a deserted six lane highway about 3 hours after it first started to snow.

An ambulance spins out and struggles up the hill with a paramedic and a bystander helping to push it up the hill. People are abandoning their cars, while others try to get around. This is the spot where I started videoing my bike ride up the hill.

Tues, 1/28 @ 1:03PM – US Hwy 280 at Cherokee Rd. An ambulance spins out and struggles up the hill with a paramedic and a bystander helping to push it up the hill. People are abandoning their cars, while others try to get around. This is the spot where I started videoing my bike ride up the hill. http://youtu.be/ZlKTOy0J8WI

Tues, 1/28 @ 1:03PM – US Hwy 280 at Lakeshore Dr. This picture is taken from the same spot as the one above, except looking back down the hill. The highway is completely blocked. There are accidents along the side, and you can see the exact spot where the cars cannot make it any farther up the hill. At this point, the line of cars probably stretches all the way back into downtown several miles away assuming that Red Mountain isn’t blocked.

Tues 1/28 @ 6:08PM – icy blueberry lane. As I head out of the neighborhood, I encounter unrideable sections of Blueberry Lane coated in solid ice. To pass this section, I ride through the yard on the left where you can see all the footprints of people walking … people unable and/or unwilling to walk anywhere near the crazy slippery road. I took this picture on my return trip after making it successfully to the grocery store to get milk.

Tues, 1/28 @ 9:42PM – city-wide sleepover. People sleep in their offices. Kids sleep at schools. At our house, we have a sleepover with stranded kids whose parents cannot make it to Rocky Ridge Elementary. Over 200 kids spend the night at Rocky Ridge as do 4300 other students in the entire Hoover school system.

Wed, 1/29 @ 8:03AM – first flipped car. I only have to ride 1/2 mile from my house to stumble (almost literally) upon the first flipped car. Rocky Ridge Rd was so icy that I walk stretches of it. I am trying to ride down the middle of the road where there is a little bit of snow (and traction), but gravity pulls me across to the side of the road onto the shoulder where I am completely shocked to be staring at this car in front of me. This moment is recorded 7 minutes and 50 seconds into this video: http://youtu.be/31u73UqPQ4A. I park my bike alongside the sign and run down to the car just to make sure nobody is still in the car (i.e., in case it had just happened while I was biking down the other side of the hill). Nobody is inside, but the contents of the car are strewn everywhere.

Wed, 1/29 @ 9:12AM – ice skating. Boris and I decide to head south on I-65 all the way down to AL-119 to buy more water and food at the gas station to hand out to drivers stuck on I-65 north. When we exit the freeway, we discover rather quickly that the ramp is unrideable and head to the shoulder. Just how slippery is it? check out this video of Boris sliding on it – http://youtu.be/KqBRt_vA2z4

Wed, 1/29 @ 11:05AM – welcome to the apocalypse! By this point, the roads are starting to melt and the middle two travel lanes are moving very, very slowly (0-1mph). But the melting ice makes what is left even more slippery. Instead of solid ice, you now have a thin layer of water on top of solid ice. Boris and I both pick are way very slowly between all of the abandoned cars in this picture and almost fall several times. Every car on the shoulder or in the right travel lane in this picture is abandoned all the way past the hill to the Hwy 31 exit out of sight. Our ride through this is recorded here: http://youtu.be/NDT8zeDPoMk

Tues, 1/28 @ 1PM – US Hwy 280. http://youtu.be/ZlKTOy0J8WI

Tues, 1/28 @ 2PM – US Hwy 31. http://youtu.be/y3BQokQ5Is0

Tues, 1/28 @ 10:45AM – Hwy 31 overlook. http://youtu.be/OgWEwn_UUg0

Tues, 1/28 @ 2:45PM – Josiah skiing. http://youtu.be/RJAFvI-mSZ0

Wed, 1/29 @ 8AM – Mountain biking to I-65. http://youtu.be/31u73UqPQ4A

Wed, 1/29 @ 8:30AM – I-65 southbound. http://youtu.be/IH3tKdXRqSU

Wed, 1/29 @ 9:15AM – Boris ice skating on the interstate. http://youtu.be/KqBRt_vA2z4

Wed, 1/29 @ 10:30AM – dollar general truck. http://youtu.be/Ufsg825mdtM

Wed, 1/29 @ 10:45AM – Welcome to the Apocalypse! http://youtu.be/NDT8zeDPoMk

Wed, 1/29 @ 10:30AM – I-65 northbound to I-459 overpass on-ramp. http://youtu.be/cxyB3h4TXzc

Thurs, 1/30 @ 1:30PM – Hwy 280 to Co Rd 41 – http://youtu.be/E77FVMy1VrI

Thurs, 1/30 @ 3:30PM – Hugh Daniel descent to Hwy 280 – http://youtu.be/8Vi_Z1DMcok

Thurs, 1/30 @ 4:20PM – caldwell mill gulley. http://youtu.be/3iyUGP48X90

Below I have created a pictoral timeline of events based on photo timestamps. I have combined what was originally two galleries into one large gallery. Click on the first picture in the gallery and you can advance through each picture at full-size with the captions displayed at the bottom.

Monday – Friday

: Mon, 1/27 @ 11:59AM – freeze warning. On this first day of the Spring 2014 semester at Samford, I bike into work, teach three classes, and then bike home in beautiful weather with temps around 50 degF. Everyone knows it is going to get really cold Monday night. This is the Wild Forest apartment entrance hill at Brookwood Medical Drive halfway up the Hwy 31 hill.

: Mon, 1/27 @ 12:40PM – winter olympics mountain goats. I bike by these mountain goat statues on most of my commutes to/from work because it is near the highest point on Shades Mountain. There are five mountain goats that the homeowners arrange around the yard doing various things throughout the year. This ski-jumping mountain setup is in honor of the winter olympics, and by the time we ride by there again on Tuesday, they have the Olympic rings and one more goat in the setup.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 7:23AM – cold walk to school. Analise wakes up sick and stays home with Kristine, so I walk Josiah to school. It is very cold and windy, but no flurries. Our expectations at this point are that we might see a few flurries sometime during the day.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 7:31AM – frozen tracks. How cold is it? After temps in the 50s the day before, my bike tracks in the mud behind the school are frozen solid with temps in the low teens.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 9:14AM – it’s snowing! I head out to work, but before leaving holler back up to Kristine and Analise that there are some snow flurries falling. I spend a couple minutes trying to take a picture that shows the flurries. As you can see, I was unsuccessful.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 9:34AM – snowflakes! After a loop around the South Cove neighborhood, the snow is really starting to pick up. I stop to try to get a picture of the flurries thinking that this is probably the heaviest snow I will see on the way into work and I’d better document it as proof. I was hilariously wrong.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 9:54AM – heavy flurries. By the time I make it to the Green Valley roller coaster at the base of Bluff Park, it is snowing much harder and making the streets wet. I start to treat the ride and corners the way I would on a rainy day.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 9:56AM – snow line. About 200 feet up from the valley floor on the Laredo climb into Bluff Park, I see a well-defined elevation line where the snow is sticking to the roads.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 10:01AM – first snow tracks. As I climb farther, the snow is getting thicker and I attempt to get a picture of my tracks in the snow. Somewhere through here I begin thinking “this is definitely more than flurries and more than a dusting”, maybe 1/2 inch of accumulation at this point.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 10:21AM – beard ice. By the top of Shades Crest, I can feel my beard growing icicles. As I am waiting for traffic to clear, I take a pic still thinking that the snow will stop and that my ice beard will melt by the time I make it into work. I still haven’t realized what is unfolding, partly because I’m having absolutely no problems with traction on my road bike.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 10:21AM – traffic trouble. At Alford Avenue, there is a LOT of traffic moving very slowly. As I approach the stop sign, there is a Hoover cop waiting to turn left, but he gives up and goes right. I am eventually able to make it out when this tanker blocks traffic to turn into the gas station. At this point, I still have amazing traction on my road bike even coming into the stop sign, making turns, etc… Not a single tire slip, so I don’t understand why there is so much traffic and why everybody is driving so slow. I was about to find out why.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 10:29AM – spinout. As I approach Shades Mountain Baptist Church, I notice a Vestavia Hills police officer blocking off the Canyon Rd rollercoaster. At the church, there is a huge line of people trying to pick up kids from preschool. A minute or two later as I approach the cars in this picture, they aren’t moving. The jeep then pulls around the Mercedes convertible, who is spinning his tires and going nowhere. At this point, I realize that there is a problem and things are probably going to get worse. I’m still worried about being on time to class because Samford has not cancelled classes. I take this picture and one more while riding past the Mercedes.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 10:41AM – icy fall. Trying to get down to a platform for a better view of the fire damage, I step down onto these steps without examining them closely. As soon as my foot hits the top step, it slips out from under me. As if in a cartoon, I slide all the way down to the bottom. These steps are coated with about 1/4 inch of solid, clear, smooth ice from the firefighting the night before and then the strong north wind all night and all morning.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 10:41AM – army national guard and fire damage. Not a great pic and certainly not worth the fall all the way down the steps, but this is looking towards the fire. Even with some of the dramatic pics from the fire, the damage was mainly constrained to underlying brush and it looks like the trees survived OK thanks to the quick work of Homewood and Vestavia firefighters.

: Tues 1/28 @ 10:43AM – hwy 31 starting to stall. Even at this point only an hour or so after the snow first started to fall, cars are struggling to get up Hwy 31. You can see a pileup at the sharp bend at the bottom and a shuttle bus off the side of the steep exit ramp. Also, the second cars heading up the hill are moving (I have a sequence of pictures showing them in different positions) but the first car is turned sideways from starting to spin out.

: Tues 1/28 @ 10:52AM – stranded family. As I approach the fire engine blocking the road from the opposite direction, I see a mother and a very young baby walking around unsure of where to go. I stop to make sure that she gets in the fire engine and snap one picture. My tracks are visible in the sidewalk. The lady’s SUV and its tracks are visible having spun out and unable to make it any farther up the hill.

: Tues 1/28 @ 10:53AM – top of shades crest. Just behind the fire truck is this scene. I try to help the lady in the SUV shown here and tell her the best course is probably to drive through the yard in front of her. She wants to get permission from the owner of the house, but as she steps out of the car she slips and falls. She laughs about it and gets right back up, but that gives you an idea of how slippery the roads have gotten after less than an hour of light to moderate snow.

: Tues 1/28 @ 11:03AM – Smyer Rd. As I descend Smyer Rd, I decide I want to get a picture of the road covered in snow. This is one of the most beautiful roads in Birmingham – with a few switchbacks, heavily forested, lined by a very old retaining wall. In 2004, a landslide caused by Hurricane Ivan wiped out a section of road about 3/4 of the way up. This section is just past the landslide area and is a bit more picturesque.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 11:07AM – cherokee rd waiting! Decision time, I have to decide whether to cut through this office or the next one which has a fortress gate. The cars in this picture are stuck waiting and unable to leave because of the SUV unable to make it up the hill around the corner.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 11:07AM – cherokee rd stuck! As I approach these cars from the other direction (coming down the hill), the SUV is spinning his tires and sliding sideways trying to get up the hill. He’s got his window down so I roll up slowly and ask if I can get by real quick. He waits for me to pass before trying again. I turn around and snap this picture once I make it past the line of cars waiting to see if the SUV will make it.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 11:10AM – cherokee rd bike tracks. The snow past the office is mostly undisturbed. It is getting quite deep (at least an inch) by this point, and I’m surprised that I still have such good traction. As I approach the fortress gate at the bottom of the hill, I talk to one of the employees leaving to let him know about the traffic jam just up the hill at the next office lot. He kindly opens the gate for me saving me from having to negotiate the path through the woods to detour around the gate with some pretty severe gradients that would be tricky in the snow.

: Tues 1/28 @ 11:18AM – Brookwood cliffs. As I ride behind Brookwood mall next to the cliffs, I am absolutely frozen but I stop to take pics of the icicles and the snow accumulating on the cliffs.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 11:21AM – brookwood hospital trouble. Already cars are starting to have trouble on this hill leading up to the hospital.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 11:22AM – near disaster. After taking a picture of the Brookwood hill, I notice there is a car and a person at the edge of the super steep embankment leading down to Little Shades Creek from Highway 31. Looking back at this picture later, I notice that my camera’s auto-focus has picked up on the snow which is intriguing to have so many falling snow flakes in focus with the background blurry. Also, I notice that the snow has accumulated on the drainage ditch highlighting a path I’ve taken down the hill before.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 11:28PM – frosty professor. As I ride past the line of cars trying to leave campus (classes have just been cancelled), several of my students and a couple colleagues roll down their windows to say hi. Brian and Matt are carpooling together, and I ask Brian to take this picture of me with the longest “beardcicles” I’ve ever had in Alabama. This is usually a Wisconsin phenomenon!

: Tues, 1/28 @ 11:32AM – internal traffic. Lakeshore Dr is backed up so badly that traffic cannot even leave the parking lots on the Samford campus.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 11:32AM – large snowflakes. By the time I make it to Russell Hall on campus, large snowflakes are falling quite heavily.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 12:39PM – russell hall plaza snow. I set my bike outside for the Garmin to adjust to the temperature while I put my bike shoes and winter shoe covers back on. Note the amont of snow that has accumulated, maybe 1.5 inches at this point with still more to come.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 12:43PM – Lakeshore Dr at Samford University looking east. As I leave campus, I snap these two picture of Lakeshore Dr. This picture is facing east towards Hwy 31. Lakeshore Dr is not moving so that internally in Samford, traffic has backed up completely around the school. One of my students has already made it onto Lakeshore just out of frame on the right side of the picture. I say hi to him now and then later find out it took him two hours to make it the one mile from this spot to the next light where he parked his car to walk up the hill.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 12:44PM – Lakeshore Dr at Samford University looking west. I go out the entrance (instead of the exit) to make it down to this point. No need to wait for the light as nobody is moving anywhere! I ride down the embankment on the other side of the cars on the left of this picture to the Lakeshore Trail where foot traffic has started to pick up.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 12:49PM – Old Montgomery, Lakeshore Dr, and the Lakeshore Trail intersection. Cars unsuccessfully try to make it up the hill to the Lakeshore Foundation rehab center just past the light. I am thinking “Where are they going to go? Lakeshore is a parking lot. There is no place to go.”

: Tues, 1/28 @ 12:49PM – the Lakeshore Trail. The Lakeshore Trail bike path has no traffic on it except for foot traffic. Footprints are starting to make the riding a bit difficult, although in this picture it is hard to see them as my phone camera’s auto settings don’t handle snow consistently well.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 12:35PM – office warmup. By the time I make it to Samford, I am absolutely frozen having been out in temps in the mid teens for over 3 hours. I have a space heater in my office, so I put my shoes, shoe covers, and gloves in front of it to warm them up for the return trip while I instagram pics that I have taken on the way into campus.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:03PM – US Hwy 280 at Lakeshore Dr. I arrive at 280 from the office park on the left. I am so focused on getting up the 18% hill out of the parking lot that I don’t realize 280 is completely stopped until I make the turn and realize that nobody is able to make it up the hill. At this point, the line of cars is probably all the way back into downtown several miles away assuming that people can still make it over Red Mountain. This is the lowest spot where US 280 crosses Shades Mountain separating Homewood and Mountain Brook from Hoover, Vestavia, Chelsea, Pelham, Alabaster, etc… The gradient in this picture is about 10%. This is where I start to video holding my phone in one hand heading up the hill. http://youtu.be/ZlKTOy0J8WI

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:03PM – US Hwy 280 at Cherokee Rd. This is another defining moment. An ambulance spins out and struggles up the hill with a paramedic and a bystander behind it pushing it up the hill. People are abandoning their cars, while others try to get around. This is the spot where I started videoing heading up the hill. http://youtu.be/ZlKTOy0J8WI

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:07PM – US highway 280 abandoned top of pass. By the time I make it past the ambulance, the only thing left is people walking down a three lane highway with no cars visible in either direction. This is at the high point by the water treatment plant.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:11PM – pileup at bottom of shades crest near 280 light. I take a close-up of the pile of cars at the bottom of the hill, unable to figure out how these cars ended up in this specific location and this specific arrangement. That would have been interesting to watch unfold in slow motion.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:11PM – shades crest hill. When I turn onto Rocky Ridge, I am confused at the pile of cars on the left of the picture and in disbelief at the ATV in the upper right of the picture sliding sideways down the hill directly towards the SUV in the ditch. The white SUV is having no problems just ahead of the SUV. My hand is freezing cold, and I have just put my glove back on after videoing my ride on Hwy 280. I cannot will myself to take my glove off again to switch the camera back to video mode to capture the ATV correcting his slide to make it down the hill successfully. Note that in addition to the black SUV halfway down the hill, there are a total of four other cars that have ended up off the side of the road on the other side of the trees.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:18PM – shades crest at smyer – police stuck. Having just climbed the 10% average, 15% max hill in this picture without stopping to take a pic for fear of not being able to get started again, I turn around to capture the scene at the top of Shades Crest. The Vestavia Hills police cruiser is stuck and abandoned. Several cars make it past the first pileup (other picture) and end up in this second one going down the hill.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:18PM – shades crest at smyer rd pileup. By the time I make it back to the top of this 15% section of the Shades Crest climb which I had passed earlier on my way into work, I am surprised to see how many more cars have piled into each other on the inside of the turn.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:30PM – vestavia dr wildfire icicles. I nearly fall on this downhill as hidden underneath the snow is a thick layer of ice from the firefighting of a somewhat large wildfire on the side of the mountain. The smaller tree in the background is coated in ice with a majority of the branches broken and bent to the ground.

: Tues, 1/28 @1:31PM – blowing and drifting snow vestavia dr overlook. As I return to this spot on Shades Mountain overlooking the highway 31 hill, I notice how much snow has drifted along the wall.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:33PM – hwy 31 medical center drive. One lone car tries to make it down the hill. Cars congregate at the wild forest apartment entrance – either abandoned, or soon to be abandoned. There is no place to go.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:41PM – hwy 31 closed. When I make it across the top of Shades Crest, I notice that Vestavia has closed off the 1.1 mile Hwy 31 descent.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:54PM – walking south on US Hwy 31. – when I see that Hwy 31 is closed and after my experience with a deserted Hwy 280, I decide that the best way home for me is to simply take Hwy 31 south. I’m cold so I don’t stop to take many pictures on the way down, but when I stop to take this pic of all the abandoned cars I ask the lady half in the picture how far she has been walking. She tells me that she left Mountain Brook a while ago, made her way to Lakeshore, and then up Hwy 31 all the way to this spot just past the Ruby Tuesday’s. The cars climbing the hill on Hwy 31 north are all abandoned. 1:54PM, 3 hours after it first started to snow.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:57PM – US Hwy 31 at the library. A little farther down the hill, I see a man walking down Hwy 31 south at the Vestavia Hills Library. Cars have slid into the grassy median. I start to worry about my own traction as the road is starting to get icy. I pick my route more carefully alternating between riding in the grass or deeper snow on the road depending on which looks faster and easier to ride. Wind-blown stretches like the one shown in this picture had to be avoided. You can see in this picture that I am riding down a stretch of deeper snow between two wind-blown sections.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 1:59PM – US Hwy 31 at walmart grocery. When I make it farther down the hill around the bend, I start to be concerned for my own safety as cars are now trying to climb the southbound side of the highway heading north at the same time as cars behind me are driving down the hill south way too fast.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:06PM – US Hwy 31 traffic jam. Near the very bottom of the hill, I am again surprised by what I see. Up until this point, there are sporadic cars off the side of the road, none of which hinting at the huge traffic jam at the bottom of the hill stretching all the way into Hoover. The three cars in the foreground are unable to make it any further. The white car looks abandoned. The grey car b/t the left two is about to try to drive around. The guy with the car door open is about to get into his range rover and drive off rather quickly – looks like he probably made it to that spot via the median and was checking to see if he could help the stuck cars before leaving. See this youtube video: http://youtu.be/y3BQokQ5Is0

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:12PM – Looking south onto the I-65 ramps. I talk to the man in the foreground and find out he has just walked here from the interstate where his car had spun out and crashed into the median. We both nervously laugh at the situation and blown weather forecast, already a bit in shock at the complete chaos/gridlock. I-65 north is stopped at the foot of Shades Mountain blocking the on-ramp backing up to Hwy 31 and partially blocking it as well.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:13PM – I-65 intersection at US Hwy 31 and Columbiana. Having made it all the way down Hwy 31 to the I-65 intersection, I encounter another scene of gridlocked traffic. To advance from this spot to Lorna, I have to ride the cement median all the way past the bridge. You can see in this pic that some cars have tried that as well.

: Tues 1/28 @ 2:23PM – wisteria hill at rocky ridge rd. My outbound route from home included this intersection of Wisteria and Rocky Ridge a few hours earlier when the first snow flurries had started falling so sporadically that I could not even get a picture of them. By the time I make it back to this spot, I have ridden over 30 miles and encounter yet another scene I would never imagine seeing, especially so close to my house. It’s not really that dramatic with a small multi-vehicle pile-up and a car sliding off the road into some bushes, but nevertheless if you had asked me a couple hours earlier what an unexpected snow storm mid-morning would do to this intersection, I would not have predicted or even imagined this.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:23PM – rocky ridge downhill. There are no sidewalks on Rocky Ridge Rd. Nobody walks here. That alone should caption this image, but as I stop in the middle of the road to take a picture I am trying to process what is happening while simultaneously figuring out how to get through the mess to my house. Kristine has called me while I was on Hwy 31 to ask me to get home as soon as possible to watch the kids which have accumulated at our house so she can make another trip back to school to pick up more kids whose parents have called us knowing barely 4 hours after the snow first started that they will not be able to make it to school. The kids in this picture are probably from Rocky Ridge. Their parents made it to school to get them and then part of the way home before getting stuck. Now they are walking the rest of the way home.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:25PM – rocky ridge rd wisteria hill. I stop on Rocky Ridge Rd looking back up the hill. These people have given up and are walking towards home. Abandoned cars are off the road in a small ditch on the right, other cars still try to make it on the left. Cars line up behind at the top of the hill waiting to see what happens.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:26PM – little shades creek hill rocky ridge rd. Just a little bit farther down the hill, I stop again to capture the scene of cars waiting in line to try the hill climbing up from the Little Shades Creek bridge. The white car has given up and is about the make a 3 point turn in front of me. After he turns around, I ride the left shoulder across the bridge and switch into the grass to get more traction. The road is already getting quite icy at this point.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:29PM – crash on rocky ridge rd. I cross the road between these cars that have spun off opposite sides of the road. Judging by minor front-end damage, it looks like they may have hit each other head on at very slow speed. Other cars are stuck behind. All cars visible in this picture should not be there, i.e., the house on the left and the house on the right do not normally have cars parked in their front yards. People may have abandoned these cars and started walking home.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:37PM – Josiah skiing. I finally make it home about 5 hours after leaving home. I find Josiah and Analise playing with kids from school in our front yard. I park my bike, run inside, grab the tiny kid skis off the TV mantle, and strap them on Josiah. It isn’t exactly the right kind of snow for downhill skiing, but Josiah gets to practice some cross country skiing up and down our hill.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:45PM – tracks on the hill. Looking down our hill at Josiah ski tracks, my bike tracks from riding up the hill, and kids playing in the snow.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:45PM – bike parking. I park my bike against the car in the street while playing with the kids in the snow.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 2:46PM – frozen wheels. During the time that I am playing with the kids, the slush that had accumulated on my ride home freezes both wheels in place. I have to carry my bike down the driveway into the garage as it is impossible to turn either wheel. I think to myself, “I’m glad I didn’t stop at any one spot for any length of time on the ride home or I would have been trying to figure out how to break the wheels free from the ice.”

: Tues 1/28 @ 2:47PM – ride stats. I take a picture of my ride stats for my commute – 4 hours 24 minutes (not counting the hour-long stay at Samford to warm up), 33.7 miles, with temps in the teens for most of the day barely warming up to 20 degF by the time I make it back. The max speed occurred on one of the steep downhills at the very beginning while it was still only just starting to flurry and the streets were not even wet yet. I spent a lot of time barely moving and soft pedaling, so the average power is about right, but the heartrate is a bit higher than it should be for such a low average speed and wattage. I’m pretty sure this was caused by a combination of stresses: wondering if I’m going to fall, mental effort picking out a route through the snow and ice, being surprised and shock at what I’m seeing, and battling the cold temps.

: Tues 1/28 @ 2:58PM – walking home from school. Kristine walks in the middle of a group of kids walking home from school. The kids are happy as clams to be playing in the snow. Another parent walks with his dog towards school to pick up their kids.

: Tues 1/28 @ 5:42PM – rocky ridge rd ice skating rink. Rocky Ridge Rd was ridiculously slippery by the time night begins to fall. Here a car has slid off the road. Just out of frame are several cars abandoned on the side of the road. I talk with one of the drivers leaving his car asking him what his plan is. As we are talking, a jeep wrangler comes flying by way too fast. The guy I’m talking to comments that too many people think their 4WD truck can handle it and end up in the ditch. Here is a great picture of this phenomenon a friend of mine posted to Facebook from live news coverage Tuesday afternoon: Ballantrae truck/SUV pileup. This neighborhood is so steep, though, that probably only trucks attempted the climb, which is why you don’t see any cars.

: Tues 1/28 @ 5:51PM – Vestavia Hills High School. The high school sits halfway up Little Valley Mountain – about half a mile from this picture of the Morgan Dr bridge over Little Shades Creek. There were at least 20 high school students milling about the store. Unable to leave the high school to get home, they had walked down the hill to get some food.

: Tues 1/28 @ 5:53PM – Milk! I’m not sure what I’m going to find when I make it back to the milk section, but it certainly isn’t this! This picture actually says a lot about how this storm has caught everyone by surprise. There should not be any milk visible in this picture. Of note, all the 2% milk is gone (actually, now that I look at this picture, I think the milk on the very far left with the red cap is 2% … doh!!!)

: Tues, 1/28 @ 5:58PM – milk and cinnamon rolls. With the extra kids at the house, our half gallon of milk isn’t going to cut it so I head out to the grocery store on my mountain bike loading up my bag with a gallon of milk and eight cinnamon rolls from the bakery.

: Tues 1/28 @ 6:08PM – icy blueberry lane. As I head out of the neighborhood, I encounter unrideable sections of Blueberry Lane coated in solid ice. To pass this section, I ride through the yard on the left where you can see all the footprints of people walking … people unable and/or unwilling to walk anywhere near the crazy slippery road. I took this picture on my return trip after making it successfully to the grocery store to get milk.

: Tues 1/28 @ 6:37PM – Back to school. Kristine heads out wearing my bike light for one more trip back to school to pick up more kids whose parents have called and are unable to make it home from work. Some of them are teachers at other schools who are spending the night with their students at school. Others are simply stuck, unable to make it home.

: Tues, 1/28 @ 9:42PM – city-wide sleepover. People sleep in their offices. Kids sleep at schools. At our house, we have a sleepover with stranded kids whose parents cannot make it to Rocky Ridge Elementary. Over 200 kids spend the night at Rocky Ridge as do 4300 other students across the entire Hoover school system.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 8:03AM – first flipped car. I only have to ride 1/2 mile from my house to stumble (almost literally) upon the first flipped car. Rocky Ridge Rd was so icy that I walk stretches of it. I am trying to ride down the middle of the road where there is a little bit of snow (and traction), but graviity pulls me across to the side of the road onto the shoulder where I am completely shocked to be staring at this car in front of me. This moment is recorded 7 minutes and 50 seconds into this video: http://youtu.be/31u73UqPQ4A. I park my bike alongside the sign and run down to the car just to make sure nobody is still in the car (i.e., in case it had just happened while I was biking down the other side of the hill). Nobody is inside, but the contents of the car are strewn everywhere.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 8:06AM – wisteria pile-up. At the Wisteria intersection just up the hill from the flipped car, I observe that the Wisteria pileup has stayed about the same except there are a few more cars that have parked alongside and presumably walked rather than trying to drive any farther.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 8:15AM – first view of I-65. The bridges shown here cross Wisteria Rd. I climb onto the interstate via the cement ramp under the bridges. I am shocked by what I see – completely stopped traffic on I-65 northbound and a completely empty interstate on I-65 southbound. The moment of me taking this picture is recorded at about 19 minutes into this video: http://youtu.be/31u73UqPQ4A.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 9:12AM – ice skating. Boris and I decide to head south on I-65 all the way down to AL-119 to buy more water and food at the gas station to hand out to drivers stuck on I-65 north. When we exit the freeway, we discover rather quickly that the ramp is unrideable and head to the shoulder. Just how slippery is it? check out this video of Boris sliding on it – http://youtu.be/KqBRt_vA2z4

: Wed, 1/29 @ 9:24AM – I-65 northbound on ramp at AL-119. While Boris fields a phone call, I take a picture of the on-ramp. Several cars try to make it up and are unsuccessful while I am waiting. The black car in this picture does not make it and is either currently backing up or about to back up all the way back down. We talk to the driver and recommend he take Hwy 31 as the gradients are shallower and I-65 is parking lot just beyond the hills in this picture. One pick-up truck does makes it almost all the way up the ramp before spinning out. He then puts it in reverse and goes back down the ramp a small distance to a well-placed 3 foot diameter pile of dirt that somebody has bought, opened and dumped onto the ramp near the top. This gives the truck traction to accelerate with enough momentum to coast up the rest of the hill. We cannot figure out how the tractor-trailer ended up in this position.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 9:50AM – snowy trail. Boris checks his phone for messages while I snap this picture. We have just followed a hidden access trail off the interstate at the Cahaba River bridge. The trail goes under the I-65 bridge and then all the way down to the Cahaba River. I cannot tell if it is leftover from construction work as it does provide a way of making a u-turn to head southbound on I-65 or if it predates the construction and widening of the interstate that was finished last year.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 9:52AM – bunny tracks. Following a side trail, I notice these bunny tracks heading towards the woods behind Riverchase Parkway.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 10:36AM – tractor trailer ice skating. None of the tractor trailers in this picture of the I-459 interchange are moving. The stuff you see on the roads is crazy slippery ice, impossible to ride or walk on. We have to navigate carefully to get to this point. This is the first picture I take after we spend nearly an hour between Old Rocky Ridge Rd and this spot handing out food, talking to people who have been in their cars and trucks for close to 24 hours, and letting them borrow our cellphones to make phone calls. A dollar general truck tries unsuccessfully to make it up the ramp here: http://youtu.be/Ufsg825mdtM

: Wed, 1/29 @ 10:38AM – I-65 northbound at the I-459 interchange. We cross over and under I-459 here with a creative route that never actually involves touching the interstate other than the ramp in the foreground here. All the cars on the I-65 on ramp are abandoned with a couple cars completely blocking the ramp towards the middle. Here is Boris navigating part of the interchange – http://youtu.be/JrN3rvzfEcw

: Wed, 1/29 @ 10:38AM – I-459 empty. Strangely, I-459 is mostly empty. The cars on it are driving fast with no problems. Apparently there is no easy way to access this stretch of 459 from either direction, though, or there would be more cars and trucks.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 11:05AM – welcome to the apocalypse! By this point, the roads are starting to melt and the middle two travel lanes are moving very, very slowly (0-1mph). But the melting ice makes what is left even more slippery. Instead of solid ice, you now have a thin layer of water on top of solid ice. Boris and I both pick are way very slowly between all of the abandoned cars in this picture and almost fall several times. Every car on the shoulder or in the right travel lane in this picture is abandoned all the way past the hill to the Hwy 31 exit out of sight. Our ride through this is recorded here: http://youtu.be/NDT8zeDPoMk

: Wed, 1/29 @ 11:17AM – columbiana blockage. When we finally make it back to Hwy 31, we see an incredible view looking up Columbiana with cars turned sideways and/or parked in the middle of the road.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 11:47AM – police chaining up. We take a different route to Columbiana – the I-65 climb to Alford Avenue and then across Shades Crest to this intersection with Columbiana. We arrive as a police officer puts chains onto his car. You can see the temporary barriers in place to prevent people from trying to go down the Columbiana Hill towards Lakeshore Dr.

: Wed, 1/19 @ 11:48AM – gators and atvs. We see lots of these on Columbiana including several shuttling people up and down the hill. We’re about to find out why!

: Wed, 1/29 @ 11:48AM – chains work. We see this car several times and observe that he must be shuttling people up and down the Columbiana hill with chains installed on his front-wheel drive wheels. Here he passes another four-door sedan that has slid off the road into a ditch so very close to the top of the hill.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 11:54AM – columbiana and berry. Here Boris is taking a picture of the multi-vehicle pile-up at the Berry Rd intersection. We don’t even realize what is around the corner … several hundred cars.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 12:02PM – forest brook hill. We stare down at carnage at the bottom of this 16% hill that goes under I-65. The top is melting a bit, but from about halfway down to the bottom, it is a solid sheet of ice.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 12:10PM – forest brook hill carnage. These cars have smashed into each other at the bottom of the hill. Somebody has side-swiped the escape in the foreground and driven away. While we are taking pictures, a car unbelieveably tries to drive up the hill and almost joins the pileup. Here is a video of him not making it and backing back down the hill: http://youtu.be/edE2UWdkwM8.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 12:13PM – I-65 moving slowly. We climb back onto the interstate here to make it down to Lakeshore Dr. I-65 is starting to move again very slowly down the hill in one lane.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 12:16PM – flipped suv. We haven’t even gone 100 meters before encountering this SUV flipped off the side of the interstate. We know that surely there is nobody still in there, but check just to be sure. The windows are tinted very dark, but inside the car we can see what looks like a child carseat and some toys. This must have been terrifying for the family.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 12:20PM – I-65 southbound parking lot. The reason why I-65 southbound was so empty through Hoover becomes painfully clear by the time we make it to Lakeshore Dr. Cars and trucks were not able to make it much farther than this spot until about this time when enough melting has occurred for this parking lot to slowly start to clear out as cars and trucks slowly climb the hill southbound.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 12:37PM – BP gas station at the bottom of Columbiana. The line in the gas station stretches to the back of the store. To put this picture in perspective, there should be no cars visible unless maybe one or two happen to drive by at the moment a picture is taken from this spot. Instead, people have parked everywhere they can fit their cars and trucks while people trying to get gas or food negotiate what is left of the driveways into and out of the gas station.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 12:42PM – Columbiana Chaos. The scene we encounter on the climb up Columbiana from Lakeshore is nearly unbelievable. Again, there should be no cars visible in this picture other than maybe 3 or 4 driving on the road at this time of day. Instead, there are hundreds of cars parked in the median, in the right travel lane, on the shoulder, and off the shoulder. A few cars try to make it through the left travel lane, but it is still too icy and several turn around about halfway up.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 12:56PM – car ditch. Boris and I have no problems riding our mountain bikes back up the climb. At the top, we get a close-up of this car in the ditch with one wheel up in the air.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 1:00PM – Shades Crest near Beverly Hills Dr. I am happy that we decide to bike through here as this is the spot over 24 hours earlier where I first encountered cars having trouble. It is interesting to see how the arrangement of cars evolved into several cars on the wrong side of the road and many stopped behind the spot where the Mercedes was spinning out. Not shown in this picture is all the cars similar off the side of the road back behind me. Also, I take this picture because I am impressed with the tracks that cars with chains have made in the snow/ice.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 1:09PM – woodridge sledding. Along our way over to Hwy 31, we decide to attempt the Woodridge descent and climb. When we make it back up to the top, we find some kids who have been using a steerable sled to sled down this hill!

: Wed, 1/29 @ 1:39PM – Samford University in the snow. At the top of Hwy 31, I take this hi-res picture of Samford still covered in snow.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 1:40PM – Hwy 31 traffic. A lone abandoned car sits in the left lane of the southbound lanes. Northbound lanes are moving, but have to merge down to one lane as the southbound traffic is using one of the northbound lanes to climb the hill. By this point in the day, the snow and ice is really starting to melt even though temps have barely made it to freezing.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 1:45PM – snowman golfer? Across Vestavia Dr, we encounter the first snowman. It’s a huge one with a set of golf clubs and lots of American flags.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 1:49PM – US Hwy 31 mess. Quite the traffic scenario has emerged on Hwy 31 by the time we make it to the Vestavia Dr overlook. If you zoom in on the high resolution picture, you can see cars crashed into each other in the southbound lanes at the Little Shades Creek bridge in the upper right-hand corner. For this reason, the southbound traffic has crossed over and is using the lefthand travel lane on the northbound side to head south. You can see somebody on a bike taking a picture on the Medical Center Dr bridge in the middle of the picture. You can also see sledding tracks on the side of the embankment!

: Wed, 1/29 @ 1:50PM – Homewood, the Vulcan, and Downtown. We chat with some walkers and run into Pat Casey who is out biking on his cross bike. During this time, I zoom in and take this picture of the Vulcan statue (middle) with downtown skyscrapers behind it in the background. Also, you can see how much the snow has melted in Homewood.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:08PM – sledding uphill. These three have made a sled train by holding onto each other while the masked man pulls them back up the hill using his ATV.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:09PM – Socchi mountain goats. The winter olympics ski jump has been supplemented with real snow, an additional goat, and the olympic rings within the two days that have passed since I biked by here on Monday.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:12PM – Carnage at the Vesclub drop-off. Boris surveys the SUV crashed into the tree while Pat waits farther down nearer to the >20% max gradient spot on this descent.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:14PM – Saved by a tree. Without the tree to stop it, this car would have rolled given the angle it was heading up the embankment. It would have made it a bit farther, reached a critical angle, and rolled over in a nasty crash.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:14PM – branch brakes. We chuckle at the tree branches that the owner of this car has used to make sure that his car doesn’t go anywhere. It adds to the surrealness of an already surreal day. Given the 20+% hill this car got stuck on, this is a wise move by the car owner as there are reports of cars sliding on the ice after they have parked.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:19PM – lower vesclub. We encounter lots of cars stuck at the bottom of the lower vesclub hill, which is still in the shade and quite icy. Pat and Boris are visible riding just behind the stuck FedEx truck.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:23PM – pat crashes. This shady section on top of the lower vesclub hill is super icy. Pat crashes twice. This is him just after he has gotten up from the first crash and right before he crashes again. The ice he is standing on is crazy slippery. The slope right below where I’m standing is close to 15% and when I go to unclip to take this picture, I lose my footing and have to bail off the bike. Fortunately there is no ice where I’m standing so I don’t fall but my bike slides a bit down the hill without me on it. The other guys say that counts as a crash, but I maintain that I am still crash-free for the whole day.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:29PM – frog skating. Pat negotiates the ice frog-skating-style. Boris has successfully made it to the side of the road just ahead of him. I opt to ride left on the melted side until a spot farther down where I can cross the ice at a 90 deg angle to the grass on the side of the road, which I ride down to the Rocky Ridge Rd bridge near the Countrywood neighborhood (next pic).

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:32PM – countrywood neighborhood entrance. Cars litter the side of the countrywood neighborhood entrance hill. The hill looks like it has melted a good bit, but people haven’t made it back to get their cars yet.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 2:32PM – rocky ridge rd at countrywood. Cars queue to attempt to climb the icy hill one at a time. We have just come down the opposite side, forced to ride in the grass because the ice is unrideable through here. Just past this stretch, though, the sun has completely melted the ice away and we splash through lots of cold water on our way to the grocery store to pick up more food.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 3:52PM – wisteria pileup revisited. After a short stop at the house for coffee and food, Pat and I head back out to Hoover via Wisteria. Here is another angle of the Wisteria pile-up at the Rocky Ridge Rd intersection.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 4:26PM – Deo Dara Dr hill. Cars litter the side of the Deo Dara Dr hill. Many of these people probably live up in Bluff Park and had to walk from here to get up the mountain.

: Wed, 1/29 @ 4:39PM – I-65 underpass at Wisteria. As I ride back down Wisteria, I snap a picture of the ramp I used to get up on the interstate about 8 hours earlier. I pushed my bike up the hill between the ice sheet in the middle and the 2nd pillar from the left. At the top, I have to turn my bike sideways and push it across the ice under the edge of the bridge. Then I have to hold onto the bridge to steady myself across the ice. Looking back at this picture, though, I now realize it may have been easier if I had just gone up on the other side of the bridge!

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 8:23AM – bird tracks. Kristine filled several containers of water to freeze solid overnight with temps dipping down into the single digits. Apparently, this was a big hit with birds looking for non-frozen water. We find these tracks in the morning and the water frozen thick across the top and mostly around the bottom so that when we flip these over, we have ice bowls of ice water.

: Thurs 1/30 @ 12:05PM – snow bunny Later in the day, we let Fluffy Steve out onto the back porch to get her first experience of snow. She looks like a natural snow bunny, blending in nicely with the snow and leaves.

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 1:18PM – US Hwy 280 at Inverness Pkwy. I head out on my mountain bike to explore some higher elevations southeast of the city near Chelsea. I ride down 280 and encounter a huge traffic jam extending all the way from the Summit shopping center nearly 10 miles back down to the Lee Branch shopping center.

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 1:44PM – Co Rd 41. After turning off US Hwy 280 onto Co Rd 41, I see a long line of cars waiting to climb the steep hill past the soccer fields. The righthand lane is still completely covered in snow and ice … over 50 hours after the snow first started falling. The church on the right has opened its doors to stranded motorists to spend the night. I ride the shoulder in the snowy grass at about 5 minutes into this video: http://youtu.be/E77FVMy1VrI

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 2:34PM – double oak snow. There is still lots of snow high up on double oak wherever the road has stayed in the shade. I descend this snowy road at the beginning of this video: http://youtu.be/83fVBmRVIkM

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 2:53PM – the cliffs. Following tire tracks in the snow, I stumble upon the cliffs at double oak. There is a sweeping view of the entire Coosa River valley.

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 2:59PM – tire tracks. Only one of these tire tracks is mine … the one that is a straight line leading up to my back wheel.

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 3:31PM – hugh daniel backside. On the backside climb up Hugh Daniel, there is one icy stretch. This car is still in the ditch. While I take this picture, a couple cars navigate the wrong side of the road to make it up the climb. Fortunately, the other side of the mountain is really bad near the top so there is no oncoming traffic. Here is a video my ride up and over the top: http://youtu.be/8Vi_Z1DMcok

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 3:57PM – meadowbrook driveway. I encounter this car that looks like it made it about halfway up the driveway before sliding back down to this spot. If it had a little bit more momentum on the reverse slide, it would have rolled over possibly all the way back down the driveway.

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 4:02PM – Keystone Drive crash. I run into these two SUVs that have crashed into each other at the Keystone Drive hill in Meadowbrook.

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 4:19PM – Caldwell Mill Rd gulley. As I get closer back to home, I come upon a stretch of Caldwell Mill down to one lane. There are several cars abandoned on the side of the road and one truck pulling a trailer blocking half the road. Also, there is this Ford Explorer that went over the edge down into the steep gulley. Even though I’m sure there is noone in the car, it is hidden enough from the road that I slide down there just to make sure. I capture that moment here in this video: http://youtu.be/3iyUGP48X90

: Thurs, 1/30 @ 4:23PM – Caldwell Mill Rd one lane. There were a lot of cars through here so I didn’t stop to take a pic of the truck that had ran into a tree. In fact, the tree saved the truck from ending up all the way down in the bottom of the gulley. After stopping to slide down to the explorer, I come back up to the road and take this picture looking back at the truck and trailer blocking half the road.

: Fri, 1/31 @ 11:01AM – snow line. In Alabama when it snows, it is usually gone by the next day (or sometimes the same day). Exactly three days after the snow first started falling, there is still a lot of snow in the shade. Anything in the sun, though, has melted. This is the snow at the start of my ride … by the time I finish with temps well into the 60s, all of this snow is gone.

: Fri, 1/31 @ 11:23AM – snow bike. I assume as I am leaving that all of the snow will be gone from the roads, so I take what I think will be one last picture of my bike in the snow. I was wrong.

: Fri, 1/31 @ 11:37AM – Dollar theater hill. A Hoover police cruiser blocks the top of this hill a couple miles from my house. I make it up with no probems by cutting through the parking lot and up the righthand side of the hill.

: Fri, 1/31 @ 1:24PM – forest brook hill under I-65. When I make it over to Forest Brook, I see that the Ford Escape with the smashed passenger side door and window and the pick-up truck that was resting against another car are both still there. There is still a little bit of slush on the righthand side of the road, but even that is mostly melted.

: Fri, 1/31 @ 1:52PM – US Hwy 280 underpass snow. Crossing under US Hwy 280 on what surely must be one of the world’s shortest bike paths at only 100 or so feet long, I encounter a lot of snow and leave some bike tracks.

: Fri, 1/31 @ 4:15PM – almost gone. By the time I make it home, all the snow in the backyard is gone. The only snow left is this snow down in a deep hole Josiah had dug next to the garage.

: Fri, 1/31 @ 4:50PM – snowman. Our neighbors across the street had made a really large snowman. It is the only snow left in their yard.

: Fri, 1/31 @ 4:17PM – girl scout cookies. Analise spends the afternoon selling girl scout cookies while Josiah and I go out for a bike ride to the dog park. Life is finally back to normal.

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Power:	315 watts
Heart rate:	180 bpm

Power:	1097 watts (5s)
Heart rate:	198 bpm (5s)

Cycling Adventures with Brian Toone

Follow the crazy adventures of an Alabama cyclist taking on the Race Across America (again) in 2017.

Winter Gridlock 2014 – a pictoral timeline

Monday – Friday

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