Atlanta commuters dodged an icicle for a second straight day Tuesday, but freezing rain knocked out power to nearly a quarter-million people north of the metro area.
If it was cold on Tuesday, well, it was just warming up. The low this morning will be in the high 20s, while temperatures on Thursday could fall as low as 14 (with a high of 30).
Although the much-feared icejam failed to materialize on Atlanta’s roads Tuesday, freezing rains felled trees and power lines from the northern suburbs well into the mountains. Before daybreak, nearly a quarter-million Georgia Power and EMC customers in northern metro Atlanta and northward were without electricity, and utility crews spent the day working in the bitter cold to restore service.
In Dawsonville, resident Charlie Lee said he went outside at about 2:30 a.m. to check on storm damage and was standing near a transformer when it exploded. He said it knocked him unconscious.
“I don’t know how long I was out,” Lee said. “But a car came by and saw me. If he hadn’t come, I would have froze to death.”
Outside of his subdivision on River Valley Road, at least five emergency trucks worked Tuesday afternoon to restore electricity from the blown transformer.
Before they could turn the lights back on, the crews had to remove hundreds of trees and other debris across the region so they could get to the broken lines. A state of emergency remained in effect for 24 north Georgia counties Tuesday. Among the hardest hit were Cherokee, Forsyth, Hall, Lumpkin, Dawson, Jackson, Banks, Barrow, Habersham and White counties.
By 10:25 p.m., Georgia Power reported about 20,000 customers without electricity, down from 93,000 before dawn. Terri Statham, spokeswoman for Georgia Electric Membership Corp., said EMC customers without power stood at 79,000 as of 8 p.m., down from 89,000 this afternoon and 134,000 at the height of the storm.
Battening down in Gainesville
At Brenau University Tuesday, freshman Sarah Frey, 18, of Lawrenceville, tried to stay warm in the dining hall after what some students described as a freezing night on the Gainesville campus.
Chef A.B Bailey cooked grits and eggs by flashlight to ensure students had a hot breakfast.
Electricity flickered on and off Monday night before it went out completely around 1 a.m. Tuesday. David Barnett, chief financial officer, said dorm temperatures dipped into the 60s overnight.
Frey said the intermittent power made it difficult to study when you need “21st century” devices.
“I had an online quiz I was supposed to take when the power went off,” Frey said. “It was due at 11:59 that night. I got it done when the power came back on.”
Only a few stores had opened on Gainesville’s square Tuesday when the ice started crashing down from the trees around 11:30 a.m.
Inman Coffee, which probably could have counted on a booming business, was closed because of the weather, a handwritten sign on the door said. Craig Pontsler, the owner of the Banner & Sign Company, said the power grid was to blame for the slowdown in commerce.
“It is kind of a funky setup down here,” he said.”We have power, and one or two doors over they won’t. It is the luck of the draw.”
In northern Gwinnett, several cities saw downed limbs and scattered power outages, but they did not seem to suffer lasting effects.
“We had some outages in the Hamilton Mill area and in the north and southwest parts off the city, but most of it has come back online,” said Dacula mayor Jimmy Wilbanks. “We’re pretty much back to business as usual.”
Metro response well coordinated
Georgia Department of Transportation crews had been working feverishly since Sunday to coat metro Atlanta interstates with brine and layer a gravel and salt mixture on the overpasses. Most, if not all, metro interstates were coated with brine or a salt and gravel mix twice before Tuesday morning.
But the black ice that had been expected on main routes around metro Atlanta never materialized.
Pavement temperatures — which GDOT can now monitor with new sensors installed this past fall — showed asphalt temperatures hovering just above freezing until around 8 a.m., when the sun began to warm the pavement.
“We got a little break from Mother Nature,” said GDOT spokeswoman Karlene Barron. “But I think we should give credit to our folks who did a whole lot of planning.”
Jim Butterworth, who was appointed GEMA Director in November, praised Gov. Nathan Deal’s decision to delay opening government offices until late morning. He said that is “exactly what we needed to be doing, and I think a lot of other folks have reacted similarly (by delaying going in to work).”
Classes also were canceled Tuesday in many north Georgia school systems, including Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Forsyth, Fulton and Gwinnett counties in metro Atlanta, which helped keep people off the roads.
Strike teams and brine spreaders
Several new technologies and resources were available to GDOT that were not at the department’s disposal in storms past.
The agency’s response was aided by additional resources and planning that came about at the recommendation of the winter weather task force formed by Gov. Nathan Deal last year.
In addition to the pavement sensors, GDOT had a new brine-making machine, a brine storage tank that holds 100,000 gallons and ten 5,000-gallon brine tankers that can spread the saltwater solutions.
A full-time meteorologist on staff at GEMA, Will Lanxton, was hired in May following the task force recommendations. He gave periodic briefings to the different state agency representatives stationed at GEMA’s Emergency Operations Center, keeping them abreast of changing weather conditions.
The state also dispatched 15 “strike teams,” another task force recommendation. Each was comprised of a state trooper, a motor carrier compliance officer, a HERO unit, a state forestry commission officer and a state Department of Natural Resources officer. Their role was to respond to accidents, stranded motorists and debris in the roadway to help keep major routes clear.
In addition, GDOT deployed 18 interstate teams, each with four vehicles, to circulate in designated areas and continuously treat the roads.
Gov. Deal visited an emergency command center in Atlanta Tuesday to thank first responders and remind them of weather forecasts that show freezing temperatures returning to north Georgia later this week.
“I told them to get some rest, since it appears we’ll have some bad weather by the end of the week,” he said.
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