Snow in metro Atlanta: About 5,000 customers without power in the state

The winter weather’s hit on power lines was far more limited than that caused by an ice storm earlier this month. Relatively few outages were reported to Georgia Power in metro Atlanta as of 7:50 a.m. Thursday. The biggest pockets involved about 200 customers in DeKalb County off North Cliff Valley Way and in Bartow County, where about 440 customers were without electricity. Power was expected to be restored shortly after 9 a.m. to most of the affected DeKalb customers and just after noon to many of the people in Bartow.

In all, the state's largest utility was dealing with scattered outages affecting about 3,000 customers in north Georgia, with many centered near Ellijay and in the state's far northeast corner. Most were expected to have service returned this afternoon. Electric membership cooperatives reported just over 2,000 customers without power, many of them in Gilmer, White, Habersham and Murray counties. Snow weighed down power lines in areas smacked by up to 6 inches of snow.  In some spots, hazardous road conditions made it difficult for crews to reach affected areas. North Georgia EMC warned that outages could increase if heavy snow and ice knock down more trees.  Read full weather story and updates here.