While the back-to-back holiday weekends are only a week apart, metro Atlanta’s weather conditions for the celebrations will be polar opposites.
The bitter cold that left thousands of Georgians without power, wreaked havoc on travel schedules and elevated Georgia to a state of emergency over the holiday weekend is expected to give way to warmer temperatures on New Year’s weekend with a high above 60 degrees forecast for Saturday.
On Christmas Eve, Georgia residents awoke to the coldest weather in nearly a decade as the temperature in Atlanta dropped to 8 degrees. That same day, Georgia Power reported that it was working to restore service to thousands in Georgia, with some utilities in North Georgia carried out rolling blackouts to reduce power grid usage.
Gov. Brian Kemp announced a state of emergency Thursday, loosening restrictions on propane carriers and allowing state parks to open warming centers for those who may lose power or motorists stranded in the cold. Warming centers were also opened in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Gwinnett and Hall counties, as well as East Point.
But relief is already on the way as one holiday weekend turns over to the next.
While temperatures remained at or below freezing on Christmas Day, forecasts show temperatures in Atlanta will rise to more than 40 degrees as early as Monday after another morning of lows in the teens, according to Channel 2 Action News meteorologists.
And as the New Year’s weekend approaches, the weather is forecast to only continue to get warmer, with highs reaching 60 starting Thursday and rising as the new year approaches. That’ll be good news for those heading out to ring in 2023, particularly for the Peach Drop returning after a four-year hiatus. The event is free and will open at 6 p.m. Saturday at Underground Atlanta.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
The worst of the state’s power struggles appears to be in the rearview amid this holiday weekend’s winter weather.
More than 250,000 Georgia Power customers had their power restored since Friday’s arctic blast arrived, with just a few hundred outages left throughout the Atlanta metro area, according to the company’s outage map. Georgia EMCs reported thousands of customers affected by outages as of Saturday morning, but by Sunday morning the number had dropped significantly.
The frigid and dangerous winter weather and winds has been brought on by what forecasters call a “bomb cyclone” — a fast-developing storm in which atmospheric pressure drops very quickly over a day.
Throughout the upper Midwest and Northeast, millions have lost power and airports have been shuttered as some areas see temperatures in the single or negative digits.
On Saturday, nearly 20,000 flights were delayed and 3,500 were outright canceled according to FlightAware.
As of Sunday afternoon, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport had roughly 300 cancellations.
The airport also had a water pipe burst, which forced a gate to temporarily shut down.
“A water leak in the ceiling above gate E34 forced the temporary closure of the gatehouse. Cleanup is underway, and the impact to operations is minimal. The cause of the water leak is being investigated,” airport spokesman Andrew Gobeil said in a statement.
And while Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were expected to be less crowded at the airport than the days leading up to the weekend, traffic will pick up again Monday and Tuesday as travelers return home from holiday trips.
Metro motorists can also expect the holiday work week to be busy on the roadways, as record numbers of Georgians are expected to hit the roads for Christmas and year-end holidays, according to a AAA forecast.
Across the United States, the winter storm has killed at least 34 people and is expected to claim more lives after trapping some residents inside houses with heaping snow drifts in addition to ongoing power outages.
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