Cold definite; freezing rain, snow possible in mountains

Friday afternoon: Slight chance of precipitation by 4 p.m. Temperatures will rise to the mid 30s.

Friday night: Chance of precipitation rises to about 40 percent. "Two to three inches of snowfall and up to a quarter-inch accumulation of ice are possible," said Channel 2 Action News chief meteorologist Glenn Burns.

Saturday: Chance of freezing rain and sleet before 7 a.m., then a chance of freezing rain between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. Temperatures will rise in the afternoon with a high of 48 degrees.

The sleet, snow and freezing rain that left almost a quarter of a million north Georgia residents without power earlier this week may have been just a prelude.

There is a chance that Friday could end with another wintry shellacking. And that could pose a threat to afternoon rush hour commuters heading home to the far northern suburbs and to the mountain regions still recovering from Tuesday’s ice storm.

The biggest concern is for parts of north Georgia where some of the ice coating trees and power lines still has not melted from earlier this week. Another layer could pull down more trees and create more power outages, state emergency management officials said.

State road crews were already gearing up to get ahead of the storm Thursday.

Workers were spreading a brine solution that helps prevent icing on interstates and state routes that could be most affected. Those include Interstates 75, 85, 20, 985 and 575 as well as Ga. 59, 515 and 400 from north metro Atlanta all the way to the state line.

The plan was to begin laying brine in the metro Atlanta area late Thursday evening and on I-20 West all the way to the Alabama state line.

The Georgia Department of Transportation will have interstate response team vehicles loaded up with gravel and salt mixtures by noon Friday, said GDOT spokeswoman Natalie Dale. They will be staged throughout the metro area to treat roads as needed.

In addition, eight strike teams composed of state forestry rangers, state troopers, and state transportation workers will be on duty to help clear fallen debris and help stranded motorists. Georgia Emergency Management Agency officials said they can activate up to 15 strike teams if needed.

“Right now, the winter storm watch indicates that this will be primarily a northern tier storm,” said GEMA spokeswoman Crystal Buchanan. “But there are certainly a lot of people who work in Atlanta and are driving north home on Friday afternoon, so that’s why it’s so important that we keep a close eye on this ever-changing forecast.”

The National Weather Service on Thursday afternoon issued a winter storm warning for parts of north Georgia, mainly north of a line from Chatsworth to Ellijay to Cleveland. Accumulations of 2 to 3 inches of snow and up to a quarter-inch of ice are expected in those areas.

Most of metro Atlanta is under a winter weather advisory from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon, with the possibility for some winter precipitation.

Meanwhile, Atlanta police are trying to determine if the brutally cold weather that gripped the city mid-week contributed to the deaths of two people.

One woman was found dead Wednesday alongside the road on Northside Drive in southwest Atlanta. A man's body was also found Thursday in front of a door on 8th Street in northwest Atlanta. Autopsies are pending in both cases.

One bright spot in the weather is that electricity has been restored to the vast majority of customers who lost it in this week’s wave of weather-induced power outages.

Georgia Power reported that by mid-afternoon Thursday there were only 78 outages remaining affecting 415 customers.

At 2:30 p.m., 12,400 Georgia EMC customers remained without power, down from 134,000 at the height of the storm. Georgia EMC estimated that most of those outages will be fixed by midnight, although the most complicated fixes will take even more time.