Atlanta weather | Rain not finished yet

“By (Monday) morning, we will still have some wet roads and scattered showers, with a gusty northwest wind,” he said.

Those dreaming of a white Christmas should, well, book a trip to Minnesota. But they can at least look forward to no rain here, as the showers are expected to abate Monday and into the holiday.

Sunday’s interminable, at times drenching, rains placed the area under a flood watch until Monday morning, with particular concern for low-lying areas and those that don’t drain well.

By the time the rainfall tapers off, some areas could receive one to three inches.

The wet, gray and gusty weather made for some challenging road conditions for those braving the elements to Christmas shop Sunday.

A wrecker had to pull a car out of a sink hole in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Dawsonville on Sunday afternoon. Dawson County Sheriff Jim Satterfield said the car was half in the sink hole. He estimated the sink hole as 10 feet long, by 5 feet wide. He said it was weather-related and police have roped off the area with tape. No injuries were reported.

Also, the Hill Street-Turner Field exit ramp at I-20 westbound was temporarily closed early Sunday afternoon while the DOT cleared out clogged storm drains.

As much as a half-foot of rain fell across Haralson County in west Georgia Sunday, closing and damaging some roads in the county, authorities said.

"At 7:46 p.m., Haralson County emergency management reported numerous roads closed throughout the county," the National Weather Service said in a flood warning for the county that runs through 7:45 a.m. Monday. "Some of these roads have been damaged due to water.”

The Weather Service reported just before 8 p.m. that Doppler radar indicated that "anywhere from 5 to 7 inches" of rain had fallen across the county.

Radar at 8:30 p.m. showed a large area of moderate moving into west Georgia from the southwest. The area of rain stretched southwestward to the Gulf Coast.

"Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the danger of floods,” the Weather Service warned. “It is very difficult at night to tell how much water is on roads."

Looking ahead, metro Atlanta is heading toward a drier but colder Christmas.

High temperatures are expected to dip back down into the 50s on Monday and into the mid- to upper 40s on Christmas Eve. There is a 40 percent change of rain on Monday. Tuesday is expected to be sunny.

On Christmas Day, high temperatures are expected to be in the upper 40s with lows in the upper 20s. And, no, snow is not in the forecast.

Motorists traveling for Christmas will find no construction-related lane closures. Those have been suspended through 5 a.m. on Jan. 2.

—Photographer Curtis Compton contributed to this report.