Staff writers Mike Morris, Fran Jeffries, David Wickert, Mark Niesse and Kelly Yamanouchi contributed to this story.
After much consternation, metro Atlantans escaped this week’s winter storm largely unscathed, but not without some inconveniences.
Roads in the Atlanta area were wet, but mostly ice-free for the Thursday morning commute. The storm dumped more than a half-foot of snow across parts of north Georgia, but the rest of the metro region got off easy.
Still as the snowstorm threatened, hundreds of flights were canceled; schools were closed in many districts; and some workers came to work later or were given the day off.
Joe Riley, who slept at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport after his Wednesday night flight was canceled, was sanguine about the experience. If he had been home in Washington, D.C., he said, his wife would not have let him eat the 16 oz. prime rib he had for dinner. And the chair he slept in wasn’t too bad.
“There’s things to get upset about and things no one really has any control over,” he said. “I can sleep on anything.”
In northwest Georgia, all the interstates and state routes were cleared on Thursday, said Mohamad Arafa, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Transportation. Arafa said the roads were “fairly safe for traveling.” As temperatures dropped below freezing Thursday evening, he said, the possibility for black ice remained.
A special weather statement from the National Weather Service warned Thursday that slick roads were possible throughout the day in areas that had significant snow fall.
Snowfall totals were generally 1 to 3 inches across the northern suburbs, while the southern part of metro Atlanta received mostly rain from the weather system. Snow accumulations in extreme north Georgia included 7.5 inches in Blairsville, 7 inches in Ellijay, 6.5 inches in Rome and Summerville and 5.8 inches in Dahlonega.
Gwinnett County schools were in session Thursday, but their Wednesday cancellation threw a wrench in Sandi Simmons’ plans. She wanted to help fix some things at her mother-in-law’s house. Simmons had her 13 year old and 14 year old at home instead.
“That they waited a little late to let us know was a little frustrating,” Simmons said of the system’s delay in making a call.
In Bartow and other northern counties, schools were closed again on Friday.
Relatively few outages were reported to Georgia Power in metro Atlanta as of Thursday morning. The biggest pockets involved about 200 customers in DeKalb County off North Cliff Valley Way.
In all, the state’s largest utility was dealing with scattered outages affecting about 3,000 customers in north Georgia, with many centered near Ellijay and in the state’s far northeast corner. Electric membership cooperatives reported just over 2,000 customers without power, many of them in Gilmer, White, Habersham and Murray counties. Snow weighed down power lines in areas. In some spots, hazardous road conditions made it difficult for crews to reach affected areas. North Georgia EMC warned that outages could increase if heavy snow and ice knock down more trees.
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