UPDATE: Here we are in December 2017 and we’re on watch for snow here in the Atlanta area. (And Santa, too, even if it is a little early.) Will we see a Snowpocalypse or a repeat of last January’s No-Snow? We’ll keep you updated right here on AJC.com. Meanwhile, please enjoy this piece published last January as we awaited the severe winter weather that... well... sort of came.
It didn’t have a fancy nickname like “Snowmageddon” or “SnowJam,” but the storm that smacked Atlanta on January 23, 1940, dropped a whopping 10.3 inches of snow that crippled transportation, closed schools, downed power lines and generally left folks here wondering how to dig out of the white stuff.
Sound familiar? It’s just more proof that no matter how many years pass, Atlanta and snow don’t mix well.
“Atlanta yesterday was buried under a blanket of snow that reached a depth of 10.3 inches, the largest in the 50-year history of the local weather bureau,” Constitution reporter Luke Greene wrote in the January 24 edition, which gave over most of its front page to snowstorm coverage.
Think the Blizzard of ‘93 or SnowJam ‘82 were heavy weather events? They were, but with accumulation totals of 4.2 and 4.0 inches respectively, they fall well below the top three Atlanta snowstorms, which racked up totals of 8.3” (1940), 7.9” (1983) and 6.0” (1936).
With between two to four inches of snow forecast for the weekend across Atlanta and north Georgia, it’s worth remembering that while we’re being told to prepare for the "biggest snow threat" in two years, it could be worse -- and it has been.
Here’s the January 24, 1940, front page of the Atlanta Constitution, detailing the city’s worst snowstorm:
Credit: AJC ARCHIVES
Credit: AJC ARCHIVES
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