The storm hit way earlier than expected and caught most of the city off guard. My kids were on a field trip downtown and we worried and worried they wouldn't make it home (I left work at noon, as soon as the rain started) Nobody expected the roads to be bad until about 4:30-5:30 but they started getting bad at 1:30 in some places, and they were much worse than expected. My kids got home safely and even made it in time for normal bus routes. Atlanta is never prepared for these things, and probably won't ever be, its just not cost effective to maintain a fleet of something that would rarely be used. I would however expect the busiest airport in the world to have some sort of plan. and it was more like 3-4 inches of snow more in some places, but there was a solid 1/2 inch of ice under it all.
I'm aware of all that and I don't really blame the various municipalities.. (Do I remember something like 60 overlapping?) The crazy quilt is unmanageable for something like that. What I blame Delta for is continuing to funnel people into a hopeless dead end. Years ago, Delta decided to place all their apples in one barrel, so they had little latitude to offload to other hubs. I really wished I had followed my daughter's advice (she has logged many millions of miles in flight), canceled my ticket and fought it out with Delta on the refund.
Here in HSV, we get "inconvenience" snows every couple of years. Christmas, 2010, we had about 8" on the mountain and about 4" in the valley, which largely melted off rapidly. Ours hung around for about two weeks, at which time we got a about a 10" on the mountain and about 8" in the valley, which stuck, since the valley was well below freezing at that time. However, the plows and salt trucks sprung into action and got the main thoroughfares cleared quickly. (On my little dead end, we have to wait a while longer and use the 4x4 Tacoma or the AWD Subaru.) About five years ago, I'd taken my little Miata to an early MD appt and, when I got out, there was already about 2" on the ground and I ended up having to follow a salt truck up to the mountain. In HSV, as spread out geographically as it is, snow removal can still be managed. Back in the 70s, there was a mayor here, been in office several terms, who made the same excuse you did for ATL. He lost and the next mayor spent millions on snow removal equipment...