Snow began falling in Atlanta and across Middle and South Georgia on Tuesday afternoon and quickly started accumulating in some areas. The National Weather Service expanded its winter storm warning to encompass Atlanta and some counties north of the city.
Light snow is likely to turn into ice as it melts and refreezes in the frigid temperatures overnight, setting up the potential for road hazards into Wednesday morning. Roads have already become dangerously slick in some areas.
The “upside down” storm is expected to bring up to an inch of snow to the metro area and several inches across the southern half of the state.
By 4 p.m., Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport appeared covered in snow, Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Brad Nitz posted to X.
People spotted snow flurries in Midtown and other parts of Atlanta, while areas northwest of the city haven’t gotten any snow.
Snow is more likely to fall and accumulate east and south of the city, according to the forecast. It is also accumulating quickly in Middle and South Georgia, where Department of Transportation teams are positioned with snowplows to clear roads.
The winter storm warning now stretches as far north as Cobb, Fulton, Forsyth, and Hall counties as snow continues to fall in metro Atlanta.
State officials warned the public to stay home and prepare for up to 48 hours of extreme cold that will bring snow to parts of Georgia that haven’t seen such a storm in nearly 40 years.
“This could deteriorate very quickly, like it did in 2014,” Gov. Brian Kemp said, referring to the “Snowpocalypse” that paralyzed metro Atlanta just over a decade ago. “That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”
The frigid temps have already claimed at least one life in the state — a “critical needs patient” who was outdoors overnight and died of hypothermia. The person’s identity and location were not provided.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
The storm prompted many schools to close and led Kemp to declare a state of emergency. Some flights at Hartsfield-Jackson were canceled, and security lines were long as many travelers heeded warnings and arrived well before their flights. State and many local government offices were closed Tuesday.
Areas south of the I-20/I-85 corridor are expected to see up to 2 inches of snow, and several more inches are possible around Macon.
“The farther south you go, the better chance you’re going to have of seeing accumulating snow,” Monahan said.
The storm — a rare winter weather event for much of the Deep South — first moved through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama before arriving in Georgia and the Florida panhandle. It prompted the first-ever blizzard warnings for several coastal counties near the Texas-Louisiana border, AP News reported.
Pavement temperatures across Georgia have been hovering right above freezing, state officials said during a news conference Tuesday morning, setting up snow to melt and freeze as ground temps plummet.
GDOT treated highways and main roads with a combination of sand and salt and has 448 snow plows ready to remove snow, which could stick through Thursday morning in some parts of the state.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Given the scale of the storm’s reach, “it’s just going to take a lot of time to clear that big of a roadway, and again, in areas that are not traditionally getting snow,” DOT Director Russell McMurry said.
Parts of South and Middle Georgia could see the most snowfall since the 1970s.
Winter storm warnings and advisories, in effect through 7 a.m. Wednesday, have been updated to include more northern counties but still exclude far North Georgia.
Most of metro Atlanta and the immediate northern counties, from Polk and Bartow to Hall and then Wilkes and Lincoln counties on the east, are under the winter weather advisory. The winter storm warning covers the southern half the state, from Harris County on the west to Columbia County on the east.
This will be the second round of snow that the metro area has seen this month. Up to 3½ inches fell across the area between Jan. 9 and 10. It was the most widespread snow the region has seen since January 2018.
Warming centers have opened in Atlanta, as well as Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties, to help those in need to get out of the extreme cold.
Travelers at the Atlanta airport faced long wait times Tuesday as increased traffic after the national championship football game and the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend converged ahead of the snowstorm.
Airport maintenance and airside operations teams have been using 36 pieces of equipment, including plows and deicing spreaders, to keep the runways clear, the airport posted on social media. More than 200 flights were canceled in and out of Atlanta on Tuesday per Flight Aware — about 10% of departures and arrivals — many of which involved Gulf Coast cities also seeing wintry precipitation.
More than 80 Wednesday flights into and out of Atlanta have been canceled as of Tuesday afternoon.
Residents in coastal Georgia — much more accustomed to prepping for hurricanes ― braced for conditions they “don’t do well” with, Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said.
“Ice, man, it’s ice,” he said. “It’s a different mindset” than hurricanes and tropical storms.
The forecast there calls for 1 to 3 inches of snow and sleet accumulation, Savannah’s first snow since Jan. 3, 2018. That storm dropped more than an inch, according to the National Weather Service. The biggest snowfall on record was 4 inches in 1989.
The Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport said it was already seeing cancellations. Flight Aware data showed only about 23 cancellations as of noon Tuesday — 7% of departures and 16% of arrivals.
The storm also caused Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing facility near Savannah to announce it would close Wednesday.
Farther south in Brunswick, the coast’s other metro area, the forecast is for 1 inch of snow. Residents of that city, located about 30 miles north of the Georgia-Florida border, last experienced snow in the 1989 storm.
The judge presiding over Jackie Johnson’s high-profile trial in Brunswick has taken precautions and announced he would send prospective jurors home Tuesday shortly after lunch. An estimated 500 potential jurors were summoned to the courthouse to start jury selection. Court also will be canceled Wednesday.
— Staff writers Adam Van Brimmer, Emma Hurt and Shaddi Abusaid contributed to this article.
