Fresh Loaf

… for up-to-the-minute reports on blocked roads and what parts of town to avoid. As well as photos of the flooded areas.

Here’s a link to an #atlflood thread. Here’s a link to an #atltraffic thread. For links to official closed roads, check out our previous post.

And when the storm passes, send some karma to SpaceyG and DriveAFasterCar (she of #atlgas fame) for helping kickstart these hashtags. (We’ve also set up a feed for the #atlflood updates on our news page, clatl.com/news).

After the jump, an idea of just how bad the roads really are.

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What’s felt like days of nonstop rain in metro Atlanta reached a crescendo Monday, causing deaths, road closures and sinkholes. As of this writing, 10 people have died in the floods. In Roswell, police and emergency worked to free children from a school bus trapped under power lines. Roads are closed, basements are flooded, and it appears this won’t end for a while.

Tessa Horehled of Drive a Faster Car captured video of flooded Peachtree Creek in Midtown West. Wait until about 27 seconds into the video. Yeah.

The AJC reports Peachtree Creek is on track to reach its third highest level on record. Horehled says there’s roughly a six foot drop (and then about a quarter of a mile hike) from where she recorded the video to the creek. She estimates the water level here’s at about eight feet. Keep in mind, this video was from earlier this afternoon, before the current bout of rainstorms.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

After the jump, Horehled’s videos.

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In her New York Times column today, Maureen Dowd asks Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams to defend their invention against the criticism that its merely a tool for self-absorbed yuppies to share mundane details of their lives with other self-absorbed yuppies.

Stone responds by listing examples of Twitter’s utility as an medium for serious, emergency communication.

Included on his short-list: Atlanta blogger Tessa Horehled’s #atlgas, which used Twitter to help Atlantan’s find gasoline during last year’s shortage.

BIZ: If people are passionate about your product, whether it’s because they’re hating or loving it, those are both good scenarios. People can use it to help each other during fuel shortages or revolts or earthquakes or wildfires. That’s the exciting part of it.

Earthquakes! Revolts! Wildfires! Tessa!

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It’s the day after Christmas.

You’re burned out from family, bummed about receiving Sudoku books for presents, and feel awkward watching the family dog run around in holiday sweaters. So what do you do? Drink and dance! But with who? Why, fellow Atlantans, silly goose! Especially ones who blog, design and develop.

Creative Loafing, along with Peach Pundit, Tondee’s Tavern, Pecanne Log, Asian Cajuns and a host of other local blogs and web outfits, is sponsoring the 1st annual Unwrapped: Atlanta Web party on Dec. 26 at Vinyl. The party’s organizer is local blogger and web maestro Tessa Horehled — the woman behind music blog Drive A Faster Car and #atlgas.

Half of all proceeds will go toward the One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit that hopes to provide the world’s poorest children with a computer and all the educational benefits it can offer. Tickets are $5 in advance and $10 at the door. (Visit Drive A Faster Car to purchase advance tickets.)

Drinks, dancing and music begins at 8 p.m. and lasts until 2 a.m. Horehled is DJing and Birdpony Photography will capture souls all evening. It’s a good idea and a good cause.

Parking and MARTA details follow after the jump.

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The person who gave the most help to Atlantans struggling to find gas in recent weeks wasn’t a governor, a mayor, or even a reporter.

Tessa Horehled is a marketing consultant and author of the popular local culture blog Drive A Faster Car.

While tracking down gas for her mother two weeks ago, Horehled used her mobile phone to post the location of stations that did (and didn’t) have gas to her micro-blog hosted on Twitter.com.

“I was trying to help people not run out of gas while they were driving around [looking for it],” she says.

Horehled included the characters #atlgas in her gas-related posts, and asked people who follow her on Twitter who spotted gas to do the same. The characters, called hashmarks, allow anyone with a computer or a mobile phone to view an up-to-the minute list of metro Atlanta gas sightings.

By the weekend, #atlgas went viral. Horehled’s online friends began posting to #atlgas, followed by their friends, etc. By Monday morning, gas-starved, web-enabled Atlantans turned #atlgas into the fourth most commonly searched phrase on Twitter.

“We beat ‘Sarah Palin’ at one point,” she says. “I consider that a success.”

Though proud her simple idea has proven so popular and so useful to so many people, she’s disappointed that neither city nor state officials have harnessed Twitter to either gather or spread information about gas availability to the community.

“It’s free and you can use it with almost any cell phone,” she says, adding that she’d be happy to give the Mayor and the Governor a quick tutorial.

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