It’s game day for UGA and Bama, and we’re talking about weather. Unbelievable. (But really not)

At least he’s dressed appropriately

At least he’s dressed appropriately

Not to say I told you so, but …

We have a winter weather advisory on the day of the national championship game. We’re supposed to get some measure of freezing rain, estimates varying. Matters are supposed to improve by early afternoon, but we weren’t – this is me catastrophizing again – supposed to get more than a couple of inches of snow back in December, and some folks got six times that.

Ice on the 2000 Super Bowl. Ice/snow shutting down the city for a full week before the 2011 Falcons-Packers playoff game. (Which the top-seeded Falcons lost 48-21.) A tornado during the 2008 SEC tournament. Freezing rain on the national championship. And here we pause to remind you …

We’re ATLANTA. People move here for our WEATHER.

We have whole winters pass without seeing an inch of snow. Yet here we are, on Jan. 8, Georgia and Alabama ready to play and the President headed here, and schools and government offices are closed -- should help with traffic flow, though -- and we are, yet again, fearing the worst.

Not that I know anything, but … this Jan. 8 date always gave me pause. As an Atlantan of 3 ½ decades, I’ve come to beware the first few days of the new year. We had ice last year on the Friday before the national championship game, which was luckily in Tampa. (I got out OK, but Pat Forde of Yahoo Sports got stuck in our airport and needed a slippery cab ride to reach his hastily arranged downtown hotel.)

When Auburn and Oregon were about to play for the BCS title in Glendale, Ariz., I was outside shoveling snow. My neighbor walked by and said, “Why aren’t you in Glendale?” Great freakin’ question, I thought. (That was the week of Falcons-Packers.)

On Jan. 9, 2010, I covered Georgia Tech’s basketball victory here over Duke, itself a seasonal oddity. That was a Saturday. We’d had a massive-for-us snow on Thursday. I made it to the game, but I still needed three tries to get up my icy driveway on the return trip.

My point: If we’re apt to get winter weather in Atlanta – as noted, we don’t get much; heck, it’s supposed to be 55 degrees Tuesday – this is absolutely our unsweet spot. Lo and behold.

OK, enough griping. I pick Georgia to win. The score will be 23-17. Watch for sleet on the Bulldogs' victory parade.