Winter Storm 2014: How Bad in North Georgia? (And When Will It End?)

Snow was still falling on metro Atlanta Thursday morning, but the fierce snow and ice storm that has taken its time to leave the region is finally doing so.

The sun’s going to peek out by noon in most places and temperatures will rise above freezing, according to weather forecasts. National Weather Service-issued winter warnings and advisories will expire by 1 p.m.

In other words, expect the slow melt to begin today.

Light snow fell overnight on top of Wednesday’s ice and sleet, creating picturesque snow scenes all across Atlanta, but also unsafe road conditions and thousands of power outages.

Authorities all over Georgia urge residents to avoid driving on ice-covered roads on Thursday.

As of 8:30 a.m., 230,000 Georgia Power customers statewide were without power, though most of the problems were outside of metro Atlanta and our 45 Patch communities. Most of the Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) power companies in metro Atlanta were reporting few outages, except for GreyStone, which had 10,000 outages, and Amicalola EMC, which reported 2,200 in areas south and north of Atlanta.

The Georgia Department of Transportation traffic map was still lit up like a Christmas tree with numerous reports of road and lane closures and incidents.

Many flights in and out of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport were still cancelled Thursday morning, and airlines were expected to run at about 60 percent of their scheduled flights.

Schools and government offices were closed for Thursday. There was no word on possible Friday closures.

According to the weather service, high temperatures will reach into the upper 30s and low 40s in north Georgia. Lows tonight will be in the 20s.

The high for Friday will be around 50 degrees.