After several days of extreme cold and rare snow in South and Middle Georgia, the state started its recovery process Thursday.
The snowfall started Tuesday evening and cloaked much of the state before turning to ice, causing havoc on roads and claiming at least two lives. On Thursday, temperatures have crept above freezing, which has helped thaw those sheets of ice. But a refreeze will happen again tonight, a pattern that will repeat through the first half of the weekend before overnight temps stay above freezing.
Officials continue urging the public to use caution on the roads. Across Georgia, there were at least two fatalities related to the weather. In Athens, a 33-year-old woman was killed Wednesday when she drove over an icy patch, causing her 2003 Chevrolet Trail Blazer to leave the road and hit a tree. Before that, Gov. Brian Kemp said another person died in the sub-freezing weather but did not share additional details, including where it happened.
Several school districts to the south of Atlanta remained closed or were on a virtual learning schedule Thursday, including the largest districts in Macon and Warner Robins. Mercer University resumed regular hours, Middle Georgia State University delayed its opening and Fort Valley State University continued virtual classes. Atlanta Public Schools were on a two-hour delay.
“While road conditions have generally continued to improve today, any lingering moisture will refreeze again tonight as temperatures bottom out in the lower 20s by Friday morning,” the National Weather Service warned.
At Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, there were still some flight cancelations Thursday, though far less compared to Wednesday. Just 2% of departures and 4% of arrivals had been canceled as of 4 p.m., according to Flight Aware data. Many of those were related to lingering winter storm effects on airports across the Southeast and Gulf Coast, including New Orleans.
The good news was that, after two mornings of extremely long security lines due to fans leaving town after the college football championship game and then the winter weather, wait times at Hartsfield-Jackson were back to normal.
At Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, the runways are not expected to reopen until noon Friday. Columbus, Albany and Valdosta regional airports were also closed Thursday, but they have since reopened.
MARTA rail service was running on all lines, officials said. The agency’s streetcars reopened Thursday morning, while buses opened in phases starting Thursday afternoon. Mobility service resumed at midday for “pre-booked medical trips only,” and all trips will resume Friday.
Georgia utilities continued to make progress Thursday in restoring electricity to thousands across the state.
Just after 4 p.m., around 3,500 of Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers statewide were without electricity, down from more than 36,000 on Wednesday morning. Most of the outages were around the hard-hit Brunswick area, which had significant ice accumulation that felled trees and branches and downed dozens of power lines. A utility spokesperson said more than 400 linemen and about 50 tree crews were working to repair the grid.
Fewer than 200 customers of Georgia’s electric membership cooperatives were still without power as of the same time Thursday, according to the outage map maintained by Georgia EMC, which represents the cooperatives.
The State Capitol returned to normal operations Thursday after being closed this week. Kemp, however, continued urging Georgians to limit their travel in icy conditions.
In Georgia’s coastal communities, the winter storm’s grip lingered Thursday as the region’s transformation from a winter wonderland to an ice castle, as officials described, interrupted recovery efforts.
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson was among those telling residents to stay off the roads to allow state and local crews to treat the pavement ahead of another freeze forecast for Thursday night. School districts stretching from Savannah to Brunswick announced their campuses would remain closed Friday.
“Our snow removal is sunshine,” Johnson said. Luckily, the forecast calls for a warming trend starting Friday morning that will push temperatures there into the 50s and 60s over the weekend.
Major highways in Middle Georgia, including I-75, I-85 and I-16, were considered clear and passible as of noon Thursday, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation. There are still slick spots on rural routes and secondary roads that should become safer as temperatures increase, the agency said.
In Macon, for example, the ice on most roads and interstates had melted and dried, though a handful of icy patches made travel treacherous enough that some businesses and government offices opened later than usual.
Further south in Thomas County, about 15 miles from the Florida state line, a record 7 inches of snow fell. The previous high for the area, even a three-day total, was 2 inches, set in 1958. Ice remained plastered to most roads Thursday morning.
The county has no “snow plows or salt trucks or anything like that,” sheriff Tim Watkins said.
Temperatures on Thursday did not get much higher than 40 degrees across much of the state. Conditions will gradually warm over the next several days. By Sunday, overnight temps should finally stay above freezing. On Wednesday, we could even see a 60-degree high.
― Staff writers Adam Van Brimmer, Drew Kann, Emma Hurt, Fletcher Page and Joe Kovac Jr. contributed to this article.
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