WEATHER-TRAFFIC UPDATE: Thick clouds keeping Atlanta cool, mostly dry

ATLANTA FORECAST

Saturday: High: 55

Saturday night: Low: 37

Sunday: High: 43

» For a detailed forecast, visit The Atlanta Journal-Constitution weather page.

A thick layer of clouds is keeping metro Atlanta fairly cool as the sun isn’t getting the chance to heat the ground up.

This is why Atlanta should only peak at 55 degrees this afternoon, Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Eboni Deon said. It’s 54 degrees currently. A few light patches of drizzle remain but are moving east.

“Most of us won’t see all that much sunshine today,” she said.

This means 80-degree days in February are merely a memory now, and Deon said those temperatures won’t be coming back any time soon.

An earlier wind that dropped the wind chill to near-freezing early Saturday morning is beginning to die down, but it’ll return Sunday, bringing with it a lot of change, according to Channel 2 chief meteorologist Glenn Burns said.

“We’re getting this southwesterly wind, and that’s bringing this moisture from the Gulf of Mexico,” Burns said. “It’s really going to create a rain train that’ll last for nearly all of next week.”

That rain train should arrive Sunday night with a 30 percent chance of showers before hitting full steam by Tuesday with a rain chance of 80 percent.

Burns said the rain will be constant, but there’s little risk of anything torrential or severe.

“Nothing very heavy — just that persistent mist and drizzle,” he said.

Some construction will likely stifle travel plans through Cobb County though, since three left lanes of I-75 North are closed from Windy Hill Road to Terrell Mill Road for construction, according to the WSB 24-hour Traffic Center. Cobb Parkway is recommended as an alternate.

Roadwork in DeKalb County is also blocking two left lanes of the outer loop from Flat Shoals Toad to I-20, according to the Traffic Center.

With the Super Bowl a week old, downtown traffic shouldn’t come close to resembling last weekend. All the Super Bowl road closures are now over.