Sky serves up a taste of winter lite

Snow! It fell north of metro Atlanta on Monday, a mantle of white that slowed traffic and quickened hearts.

It fell out of a leaden sky. It landed lightly, lightening moods. It prompted school officials in some mountain counties to send the kids home early.

It was, said Jill Hampton, “really, really pretty.”

Hampton should know. She’s from Blue Ridge and has seen a few snowfalls in 22 years of weather-watching.

“This is a good snow,” said Hampton, eyeing the snow from Sue’s Cafeteria & Ice Cream Parlor, where she works. “It’s not a teeny one.”

It was not the storm of the century, either.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service said the snow wasn’t going to reach Atlanta.

Some sleet might bounce off metro Atlanta roads and rooftops, said meteorologist Sean Ryan, but that’s about all.

Nor are we likely to see any snow later this week, he said.

The rains that gave the city a good soaking over the weekend should dry up and go away. Coming behind that will be slowly warmer temperatures. By Thursday, Ryan said, we could see a high in the 50s.

“We’re usually right on the edge of whether it will snow,” said Ryan, who forecasts from the Weather Service’s offices in Peachtree City. “It will still be cool, but …”

But, well, too bad, kids and commuters.

Still, for a while Monday, some areas north of Atlanta got a taste of winter lite —- a snowfall, but not a heavy, full-bodied one.

Heather Dowdy of Cumming was happy to sample the precipitation.

“It’s been falling,” Dowdy, an administrative technician with the Forsyth County Parks and Recreation Department, said with a touch of disappointment in her voice. “But it’s melting as soon as it hits the ground.”

Not so in Lumpkin County, where schools Superintendent Dewey Moye decided to send about 4,000 students home an hour-and-a-half early to avoid slick roads. “Obviously, the kids were happy,” Moye said. “My concern was safety.”

Fannin and Rabun counties closed their schools, too.

OK, the stuff can be hazardous —- lovely, too. Snow lay like lace on cedars. Statutes wore white wigs. People smiled. Snow!