Every Friday, FreightWaves takes a look at the past week or so in social media, highlighting images in trucking, transportation and weather. This week features a fiery two-truck crash in Atlanta, record-size hail in Australia, South Dakota snow and more.
Log jam
A tractor-trailer fire shut down all lanes of Interstate 285 southbound near the Atlanta airport all day Thursday. WSB-TV reported that the accident happened at the Washington Road exit around 7:45 a.m. ET. The crash involved two tractor-trailers and a third truck. College Park, Georgia, fire officials said one of the trucks was a flatbed carrying lumber, and the second was a semi carrying 10,000 pounds of candles.
According to police, the driver of the third truck fell out of it, which caused a chain reaction crash. The runaway truck went down an embankment, ran over a sign and came onto I-285. Once on the interstate, the truck was hit by the tractor-trailers hauling the candles and logs, sparking a fire. No serious injuries have been reported. One of the drivers was treated for minor burns.
South Dakota snow
Some big snowflakes fell Wednesday across the Plains as aircraft were fueling up at Rapid City Regional Airport in South Dakota. Winds were gusty at times, too. Most of Rapid City received 2.5 to 3.5 inches, but 7 inches of snow piled up to the west in some parts of the Black Hills.
The day before, the same storm dumped 10 to 20 inches in the mountains of western Wyoming, producing blowing snow and occasional whiteout conditions. As the storm began Monday night, it dropped 8 to 10 inches of snow in parts of the Wasatch Range just east of Salt Lake City.
Down Under doozy
Record-breaking hail Tuesday slammed parts of central Queensland, Australia, with stones measuring 6.3 inches in diameter. The gigantic hail fell in the town of Yalboroo, north of Mackay, as a supercell thunderstorm passed over the region around lunchtime.
The Bureau of Meteorology confirmed they were the largest hailstones in Australia’s history, breaking the record of 5.5 inches set in Kempsey, New South Wales, in 1999. It wasn’t a world record, however. That title is held by a hailstone measuring nearly 8 inches in diameter that fell in Vivan, South Dakota, on July 23, 2010.
Beauty shot
This week’s beauty shot takes us back to Wyoming for a spectacular view of “snowliage” — snow and fall foliage at the same time.
Click here for more FreightWaves articles by Nick Austin.
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