It’s about to get real, y’all.
Yeah, Athens has already received about 3.5 inches of snow, but that’s not what you should be worried about—it’s the freezing rain that’s coming this afternoon.
“The real danger now is people will look out the window and say, ‘Oh, that doesn’t look too bad,'” Gov. Nathan Deal said at a noon news conference. “…We shouldn’t be deceived by that.”
The National Weather Service says a mix of freezing rain and sleet will be falling over Athens this afternoon, switching entirely to freezing rain after 2 p.m., then back to a mix, then back to snow early Thursday morning.
How bad things get depends on how much sleet falls, as opposed to freezing rain. As the folks at Athens, GA Weather helpfully explain, freezing rain is much worse because the ice will weigh down power lines and make everything instantly slick. A half-inch or more will “cripple the city.”
We’re predicted to get half an inch of ice, although we’re right on the line between areas that will get less or more. Combined with 25-mile-per-hour winds, that would mean lots of downed trees and limbs and power outages lasting 1–5 days.
UPDATE: At 4:01 p.m., Athens is now under a winter storm warning instead of an ice storm warning. The latest NWS prediction is 1–3 inches of snow and a tenth of an inch of freezing rain tonight and tomorrow morning. So not quite as bad, but still pretty bad.
So far, no one in Athens has lost power, according to Georgia Power, but again, the worst is yet to come. UPDATE: As of 4 p.m., Georgia Power is reporting three outages on Lexington Road and Whitehead Road affecting 424 customers. Here’s a website where you can see if your power is out, in case you can’t tell by, you know, looking at a lamp or a TV.
If you somehow failed to stock up on bread and milk and whiskey, here’s a list of bars and restaurants that are open today. Don’t drive. Walk. Actually, don’t even walk. Stay inside. Seriously. Athens-Clarke County police say the roads and sidewalks are “covered in ice and very treacherous.”
If you get stranded in your car or lose power, the Red Cross has opened an emergency shelter at Clarke Central High School. Keep in mind that it’s for emergencies, and you’re on your own as far as getting there unless it’s a life-threatening situation, because ACC has limited resources, according to ACC spokesman Jeff Montgomery. ACC Chief of Police Jack Lumpkin adds, “We’re not going to leave anybody in harm’s way. We will problem-solve with them to help them figure out how to get home or to a shelter.” In other words, the police department will help out where it can, but it is not running a taxi service.
Here’s a list of schools that are closed Thursday. (Spoiler alert: basically all of them.)
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