Snow possible in far North Georgia as next round of arctic air sweeps in
Another surge of arctic air is set to smack North Georgia late Wednesday, and some higher elevations may even get snow, forecasters say.
“I want you to get ready for that coldest air of the season,” Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Brian Monahan said. “We’re going to open the door wide-open to the Arctic, the polar air in Canada, and that is all going to be sliding and tumbling to the South.”
If you’re hoping for a snow day, metro Atlanta likely won’t even get flurries. And any snow that falls in the mountains isn’t expected to stick for very long. If there is accumulation, the National Weather Service predicts it will be under an inch.
Temperatures will still be mild Wednesday afternoon, with highs climbing into the low to mid-50s across the northern half of the state. Scattered showers are projected ahead of the cold front, but as nightfall approaches and the cold air arrives, temps will crash into the 20s.
That will be cold enough for metro area counties to open warming centers starting Wednesday.
Any remaining showers over northeast Georgia will turn into snow or flurries as the cold air catches up, Monahan said. Those same conditions are not likely in metro Atlanta, where showers are expected to be gone by the time temps fall low enough for snow to develop.
By Thursday morning, bone-chilling cold will have set in. The low is expected to bottom out around 24 degrees in the city, which would make it the coldest day so far this winter. The area did see lows fall to just 20 degrees on Dec. 15, but that was before the winter season’s official Dec. 21 start.
By Thursday afternoon, highs will struggle to make it into the upper 30s, and wind chills will make it feel more like the teens and 20s, the Weather Service warns.
Projected highs climb back into the 40s on Friday through the next several days, but lows are expected to stay in the 20s and 30s for the foreseeable future. That is much cooler than January’s typical 54-degree high in Atlanta and 36-degree low.
“This colder weather pattern is going to last all the way through the weekend, likely through a lot of next week, as our January kind of flips the script here for the second half of the month,“ Monahan said.
The year started with abnormally high temperatures that teased records and made it feel more like springtime across much of the Peach State.
Only a handful of days this winter have fallen within the normal temperature range. Since the season started, it’s been warmer than usual, with Christmas Eve and Dec. 27 even reaching 78 degrees — setting a new temperature record for both dates.
The abnormal warmth lines up with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s prediction for higher-than-average temperatures across the Southeast through February. But cold blasts are still expected, and that is what we are seeing between the warmups.
