![]() "Plus the buses stopped working so that left students on campus stranded so more cars came on campus to get students, and that made the traffic worse," she said. Isom said the roads weren't prepared well enough. Member station WUNC spoke to UNC-Chapel Hill student Jessica Isom, who said she had traveled 3 miles in three hours. The situation led officials to postpone tonight's planned basketball game between archrivals North Carolina and Duke - a game that, earlier today, the state's governor had urged people not to try to attend. but was still on the road in Raleigh - 25 miles away - at 4 p.m. The News Observer spoke to Bob Hofstadter, who had left work in Durham at 2 p.m. "We've been warning folks for two days: This is going to be bad." ![]() "Just in the Raleigh area, we put down more than 114,000 gallons of salt brine," he says. The gridlock has come despite warnings and preparations, Abbott says. "It was like a rush hour, only instead of between 4 and 6, it was from 1 o'clock until now - and then you throw in cars that may be broken down along the road, or have slid sideways, and that's adding to it," he said. Many people headed for home just after lunch, says North Carolina Transportation Department spokesman Steve Abbott. in Chapel Hill, the sky was gray and the air was clouded with snow. And in scenes like those seen in Atlanta two weeks ago, some are leaving their cars in the road, creating new challenges for other drivers and work and rescue crews.īy around 1:30 p.m. In Charlotte, Raleigh, and other parts of North Carolina, commuters have been sitting in their cars for hours to make trips that often take less than 30 minutes. That's been the story in Texas and Georgia, where ice has coated streets and cars (you can follow the broader effects of the storm in our main post from Wednesday). The worst of the conditions may be yet to come, as officials expect freezing rain and sleet to hit the area as the storm moves out. ![]() Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency ahead of the winter storm.įrom what we're seeing, people are blaming the problem on two factors: The snow came on fast and immediately stuck to roads and most commuters who worked Wednesday tried to leave at the same time, adding to the gridlock. The intense traffic came one day after Gov. "Snow arrives in the Triangle as expected but causes gridlock anyway," reads the headline in the Raleigh News Observer, referring to the Research Triangle of the cities Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Even those who left just after noon have been trapped by the heavy snow that arrived today. But drivers in North Carolina still fell prey to the winter storm that the National Weather Service predicted would be "potentially crippling" to the area. Traffic creeps along Wade Avenue in Raleigh, N.C., where commuters were caught on roads despite officials' encouragement not to travel.
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