Metro Atlanta residents will wake up to brisk temperatures Wednesday morning, but the day will mark the start of a warming trend.
Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Brad Nitz says Wednesday morning temps will start near 24 degrees in Atlanta, though some of the suburbs may see lows in the upper teens. As the day goes on, the mercury will begin moving upward, with the day’s highs expected to reach the upper 40s. Sunny skies are expected.
Check the latest forecast here.
The sunshine will continue for a few more days, Nitz said, and temperatures will trend upward. Thursday morning’s lows will dip near the freezing mark – much better than lows in the 20s of the days before it - while the day’s high temperatures will hit the mid-50s. Friday will see mostly sunny skies and top temps in the lows 60s.
Nitz said a few clouds are in store for the weekend. Saturday will likely see partly cloudy skies and temps reaching the upper 50s, and Sunday’s high will approach 70. Accompanying Sunday’s warmth, however, will be the chance of showers and storms.
“We’ll be watching for the possibility for strong or even severe storms on Sunday,” Nitz said.
The warming trend of the next few days likely will come as a relief to those who endured the cold temps earlier in the week. Tuesday’s high temperature in metro Atlanta only reached about 36 degrees – far below the average high of 63. And winds made it feel even colder, with wind chills reaching the 20s.
Atlanta’s official low early Tuesday at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport of 24 degrees was 20 degrees below normal and just 4 degrees away from the record low for the date of 18, set in 1891. Wind chills dropped as low as 11 degrees in metro Atlanta and into single digits in the mountains.
Attempts to stay warm lead to fires
Tuesday’s cold weather led members of one DeKalb County family to start a fire in the fireplace of their new To-Lani Drive home. It was one of the only ways they could stay warm.
DeKalb fire Chief Doug Brown said the family had not yet been able to turn on their power and gas. That fire in the fireplace, he said, got out of the fire box and into the walls around the fireplace. Firefighters were able to extinguish the predawn blaze, but not before it caused "pretty good damage to the living room area," Brown said.
No injuries were reported as a result of the blaze, nor were any reported as a result of a Gwinnett County fire Tuesday afternoon.
Gwinnett fire Captain Tommy Rutledge said a house fire in the 2900 block of Creek Drive NW in Duluth appears to have started in the attached garage and spread into the home. The occupants, he said, were reportedly using electric heaters to provide heat and also had a propane heater in the garage to warm the water pipes.
Rutledge said, however, that investigators do not yet know whether the propane heater led to the fire. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation.
Officials begin preparing for harsher weather conditions
The coldest Arctic blast since last winter caused isolated black ice on the roads Tuesday. Most metro roads were dry early Tuesday, but the WSB 24-hour Traffic Center reported icing before daybreak on I-20 westbound at Salem Road, on I-285 eastbound at Ashford Dunwoody Road and on U.S. 78 westbound at Hugh Howell Road.
Only time will tell if the black ice was a small taste of things to come this winter, but state agencies spent their Tuesday morning preparing for even harsher road conditions. The Georgia Emergency Management Agency opened its Emergency Operations Center for a coordination exercise that involved GEMA, the Georgia Department of Transportation, the Georgia Department of Public Safety, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Georgia Forestry Commission and the Georgia National Guard.
Officials later showed of some of the new plows and brine trucks that have been added to the state’s snow-removal arsenal since last winter.
Metro Atlanta experienced this past January what was dubbed “Snowmageddon” as heavy snow fell as businesses and government agencies sent workers home. Thousands of motorists were stranded overnight – and well into the next day — on jammed, ice- and snow-laden streets and interstates.
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