Georgia is still reeling from its second snowstorm of the month, a rare one-two punch from Mother Nature that has stranded thousands of airline passengers and motorists and triggered a cascading series of emergencies across the state.
The National Weather Service is warning of possible hazardous weather conditions through Tuesday of next week, with freezing temperatures lingering for several more days after the snow stopped falling early Wednesday. That’s a recipe for icy roads, particularly in central Georgia.
Unlike the first snowstorm of 2025, the second one hit the lower half of the state the hardest, delivering some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades in communities as far south as the Florida border. The cold snap stretches across all of Georgia, though, including metro Atlanta, where temperatures are expected to stay in the 20s overnight.
State law enforcement authorities said they had responded to hundreds of calls for help since Tuesday, including reports of 103 car crashes. Parts of I-75, a main artery in Georgia, were covered in ice south of Macon.
Metro Atlanta wasn’t spared, despite getting only around an inch of snow Tuesday, unlike some parts of Middle and South Georgia, which got 6 inches or more.
In Gwinnett County, police dealt with more than 450 calls related to crashes. DeKalb County declared a state of emergency Wednesday, urging residents to stay off the roads and to shelter in place amid the frigid temperatures. DeKalb responded to hundreds of 911 calls as of Wednesday morning and received reports of more than 100 stranded vehicles, including fire trucks that got stuck.
Early Wednesday morning, Courtney Shelley saw an urgent call for help pop up on Nextdoor, the app he uses to connect with neighbors in Stone Mountain. A woman sought assistance for her 30-year-old son, who was stranded on the road all night. As Shelley walked to the scene, he counted more than a dozen cars stuck on the road. When he located the woman’s son, he was huddled underneath a blanket in the driver’s seat with his heater turned up.
“I gave him a bottle of water and some crackers and allowed him to call his mom,” said Shelley, who owns a landscaping service.
More than 30,000 customers across Georgia were still without power Wednesday afternoon, roughly 24 hours after the winter storm struck. Many of the homes without power were concentrated around Brunswick and southern portions of Georgia’s coast.
In Brunswick, Sherita Clarke scraped ice off the front of her snow-covered SUV. She said she hadn’t seen snow there since 1989, when she was a child. She woke up Wednesday without electricity.
“I’m going to my cousin’s house because she has heat and power,” she said. “It was beyond cold. I didn’t have no tea this morning, no nothing.”
At Atlanta’s airport, more than 430 flights were canceled. Regional airports in Columbus, Macon, Albany and Valdosta were closed as of Wednesday afternoon. MARTA buses and streetcars were still suspended Wednesday afternoon.
Other parts of the South were blanketed with snow, including the beaches in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. The Associated Press reported Tuesday’s snowfall set a record in New Orleans, where 10 inches fell in some places, surpassing its record of 2.7 inches set on Dec. 31, 1963.
Parts of South Georgia also got hit with record snowfalls, according to the National Weather Service. Cordele reportedly received 9 inches. The city’s previous record of 3.5 inches was set during the “Great Southeastern Snowstorm” in 1973.
Cordele officials kept their government offices closed Wednesday and urged motorists to stay off the roads. The city is in Crisp County, where public schools were shut down.
“Everywhere you look, you see white,” Cordele Commissioner Isaac Owens, the pastor of Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church in Cordele, said Wednesday morning. He added that he was choosing to look on the bright side: “This gives us a chance to slow down for a minute and to enjoy the beauty of what is taking place in our world right now.”
In Macon, where about two inches of snow fell, Hank and Emily Avery looked on as their kids zoomed down a snowy hillside. To remember it, the kids resorted to a Southern tradition of preserving such treasures.
“We have a snowball in our freezer,” said 10-year-old Addey.
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson livestreamed a walk — slow and careful — around his westside neighborhood Wednesday morning after up to 3 inches of snow fell on the coastal city. He noted requests from residents to “plow out” their streets and driveways but said “we don’t have those capabilities.” The city rarely sees snow, does not own snow plows and maintains only a limited supply of road salt.
“I declare this a snow day, a Netflix or watch-a-movie day,” the mayor said. “This is not a place for you to be out today.”
The mayor logged off by making a snow angel in his front yard.
—AJC staff writers David Aaro, Rosana Hughes, Emma Hurt, Drew Kann, Charles Minshew, Jozsef Papp, Caitlyn Stroh-Page, Taylor Croft and Adam Van Brimmer contributed to this report.
Credit: Ben Hendren for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Hendren for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
