After experiencing their coldest morning in nearly a decade this weekend, metro Atlantans will find temperatures on Christmas getting back above freezing.
The holiday weekend hasn’t been particularly festive for thousands of North Georgians whose homes were without power or for folks having to head outdoors and facing single-digit temps and wind chills.
Highs on Sunday are expected to reach back above freezing at least briefly in Atlanta, according to Channel 2 Action News meteorologists.
“It will still be dry, and our temperatures will start to moderate just a bit but still running well below normal,” Channel 2′s Eboni Deon said of metro Atlanta and North Georgia.
However, the wind chill advisory remains in effect for the region through 1 p.m. Christmas Day, said Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Jennifer Lopez.
The winds behind that wind chill will make if feel like 7 degrees Sunday morning, Lopez said.
Although highs are generally in the mid-50s for this time of year, the chilly Christmas is certainly a reprieve from Saturday when the region woke up to the dangerous combination of single-digit temperatures and bone-chilling winds. By midday Saturday, the wind chill for metro Atlanta was still hovering near zero.
The cold snap came thanks to a so-called “bomb cyclone” that brought heavy snow and rain to large swaths of the country. Nationwide, officials have attributed at least a dozen deaths to exposure, car crashes on icy and snow-covered roads and effects of the storm, The Associated Press reported.
In response to the inhospitable weather, Atlanta and many parts of the metro area opened warming centers for those unable to shelter from the cold in which deadly hypothermia was a threat. Centers were in operation in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Gwinnett and Hall counties, as well as East Point.
Many of the sites are expected to remain open through Monday or Tuesday as dangerous temperatures persist, posing a threat particularly to the homeless or those facing ongoing power outages.
State parks also opened warming centers for those who may lose power or motorists stranded in the cold. That step came after Gov. Brian Kemp announced a state of emergency Thursday.
At 8 degrees, the temperature in Atlanta early Saturday marked the coldest the city had seen since January 2014. Indeed, the conditions in Atlanta on Saturday morning were almost 30 degrees colder than those in normally much colder Livingston, Montana, the National Weather Service said.
On Sunday night and heading into the observed work holiday on Monday, lows are expected to be roughly 16 degrees.
“It is going to stay bitterly cold right on into the evening,” Deon said. “If you don’t have to get out, probably best to stay inside where it’s nice and warm.”
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
Relief, however, is on the way. Temperatures are expected to steadily increase throughout the week, with highs for the new year expected to reach close to 70 degrees.
Heavy wind gusts early Friday brought down trees around the metro area, causing isolated power outages that added up to affect tens of thousands of residents.
On Sunday morning, Georgia Power’s outage map showed hundreds of customers were affected by outages scattered across metro Atlanta and North Georgia. The company reported Saturday that more than 250,000 of its customers had power restored since Friday’s arrival of the arctic blast in the state.
Georgia EMCs reported thousands of customers affected by outages as of Saturday morning, but by Sunday morning the number had dropped significantly. Some utilities in North Georgia carried out rolling blackouts early Saturday to reduce power usage, following a Tennessee Valley Association directive to stabilize its strained grid. TVA announced around midday Saturday that it had ended the rolling blackouts.
Despite the frigid weather, operations at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport were running smoothly on Saturday morning, according to spokesman Andy Gobeil. The airport’s main security checkpoint had roughly a 15-minute wait as of midday.
“The biggest challenge is the same as yesterday: the cold weather for all of the employees who are working outside,” Gobeil said. “So we’re making sure that they have their cold weather gear. We’re making sure that they’re allowed to head on inside and warm up after certain periods of time to make sure they’re taken care of.”
A Transportation Security Administration spokesman said its security officers screened slightly more than 71,000 passengers on Friday, down about 15,000 from a week earlier.
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
For a detailed forecast, visit The Atlanta Journal-Constitution weather page.
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