Atlanta did the impossible in winter 2014 by getting on Canada’s bad side.

I can understand the resentment. While countless Canadians were using their own frostbitten house pets to fend off the glaciers annexing their driveways, Atlanta’s leadership and citizens were in tears over a few inches of snow and ice, like the bourgeoisie crying over lukewarm caviar. Throwing up our hands in abject despair at the first sight of the fluffy white menace wasn’t embarrassing enough, oh no. Atlanta is a city of enterprise, and we wouldn’t stand to be outdone. We also managed to prolong the crisis for as long as possible by burying our heads in the snow, preventing any sensible solutions from taking hold.

I say we, but perhaps unfairly. I wish I could take credit for the world-class stupidity that was on display, but I was holed up in my home throughout the whole ordeal, my only trial being the next coffee packet to pop in my Keurig. Meanwhile, my father spent 36 hours on the freeway in a vehicle without a functional heater; my mother drove (read: slipped and slid) four miles over the course of seven hours; and my sister learned firsthand what it’s like to spend the night at Walmart. It sounds bad, I know, but I slept well at night—comfortably, and in my own bed—knowing my family didn’t have to endure the emotional hardship of deciding between vanilla spice and decaffeinated Columbian.

What was truly remarkable about Atlanta’s affectionately named icepocalypse was the city’s role in the hubbub. All mother nature contributed was varying degrees of snow and ice, and as Canada has proven, that alone isn’t enough to end the world. Stupidity did not rain down from the heavens, but was instead born of the tattling and panicking the city spent most of its energy on. The moment things got bad, the utilities and public services of 45 counties started pointing fingers like red-handed schoolchildren, every one of them eager to dodge the blame. “We weren’t prepared for this,” they eventually admitted, and with that the city loosed the “no shit” heard ‘round the world.

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Yet preparation wasn’t the issue, at least not the biggest one. Sure, Atlanta didn’t have fleets of snow plows on speed dial, but then again it really shouldn’t. We don’t see severe winter weather often enough to warrant that kind of hunkering down. We could stand to invest in more than the single soup ladle which was apparently used to clear all the highways, but I digress.

It was Atlanta’s bullheaded reaction that earned it a weeklong stay in the dunce corner. You can’t stop inclement weather no matter how many snow plows or how much street salt you have stashed away. That said, you can prevent it from becoming a statewide epidemic by, say, not spontaneously dumping an entire city worth of vehicles onto already engorged and rapidly freezing streets. The city turning into a parking lot was the main problem, and it was the sheer volume of pell-mell drivers that did it. The ice helped, but if you replicated the city’s reaction during even the clearest weather, you’d see comparable congestion. Better would have been to acknowledge the weather early and move people accordingly, or at the very least confirm road statuses before opening the flood gates.

Thankfully, some good came out of it, as evidenced by the mutual tension lingering in the air. At the time of writing, word on the Weather Channel is that the icepocalypse’s uncle Jason has descended upon the Southeast. Yet even with the worst of it due northeast of Atlanta, people have dutifully begun calling out of work and hoarding food like they glimpsed nuclear fallout in the forecast. Clearly, a lesson has been learned. It just would have been nice if it hadn’t taken the well-deserved mockery of every northerner to teach it.

But hey, the real ice is headed north of us this time, so at worst, we may see a few inches of powder. Some actual fun in the snow may even be on the agenda. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going into hiding before the karma mafia sends its leg-breakers after me.