No significant snow accumulations or travel problems were reported as a narrow band of snow blew quickly through metro Atlanta before daybreak Wednesday, but the brisk winds that pushed the flurries out of the area were causing problems for utility companies.
Much of the state, including all of metro Atlanta, was under a wind advisory until 7 p.m. Wednesday for winds gusting up to 40 mph. Just west of downtown, Clark Atlanta University recorded a wind gust of 51 mph at 8:45 a.m.
Those high winds were causing numerous power outages as trees and limbs topple onto electric lines.
Georgia Power spokeswoman Carol Boatright said about 5,800 metro Atlanta customers were without electricity at 11 a.m., down from nearly 10,000 earlier in the morning.
“That includes over 100 separate events, so a lot of them are limbs down that are affecting 2 or 3 customers, and that’s keeping us running right now,” Boatright said. “We’re getting them on fairly quickly, but just as quickly, [the wind] is blowing something else into the lines.”
While Atlanta’s windy conditions weren’t delaying flights at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, high winds in the Northeast were causing delays for flights headed to New York-area airports late Wednesday morning.
At 11 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration was reporting delays averaging an hour or more on flights bound for Newark, JFK and LaGuardia airports, and delays averaging nearly 2 hours on Philadelphia-bound flights.
By 9 a.m. Wedensday, metro Atlanta’s flurries had ended, and all precipitation had moved well east of Atlanta into east Georgia.
Channel 2 meteorologist Karen Minton said just after 5:30 a.m. that snow flurries had been reported in Carroll, Coweta and Douglas counties, as well as in Cobb County, where the snow was accumulating on shrubs and lawns near Kennesaw. By 6:30, flurries were reported in downtown and Midtown Atlanta.
The National Weather Service measured .4 inch of snow Wednesday morning, only the third time since 1930 that measurable snow has fallen during November in Atlanta. The city’s two previous measurable November snowfalls were 1 inch on Nov. 11, 1968 and .6 inch on Nov. 23, 1975.
Temperatures at 7 a.m. included 32 in Dallas and Dunwoody, and 33 in Marietta and Alpharetta.
The National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory until 1 p.m. for locations above 2,500 feet in the northeast corner of the state. “Icy roads are possible, especially on bridges and overpasses,” the Weather Service warned.
Teri Pope, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation, said DOT crews began spreading salt and stone on Union County roadways around 6:30 a.m., and that other crews were out monitoring road conditions in Towns and White counties.
No icing or slick spots were reported on metro roadways.
Minton said temperatures will hold in the 30s throughout the day Wednesday before plunging into the low to mid-20s early Thursday.
Thanksgiving Day will be sunny and cold, Minton said, with highs in the mid-40s.
Thursday’s sunny weather should hold through the remainder of the holiday weekend, with temperatures warming into the 50s Friday and Saturday.
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