Area snowstorm largest since blizzard of 1993

The largest snowstorm since the famed blizzard of 1993 closed out a month that brought a different weather pattern every week to the Tennessee Valley.

According to measurements taken at Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport, the city received 4.7 inches of snow between Friday and Saturday. Bradley County reported 6 inches of snow.

With ice still plaguing mountain roads, many area school systems in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia announced closings or delays for Monday. Hamilton, Bledsoe, Bradley, Grundy, McMinn, and Rhea county school systems were closed in Tennessee.

Cleveland City Schools also closed their doors for Monday. Dayton City Schools and St. Andrew’s Sewanee School will open with a one hour delay.

Dade and Walker county schools closed Monday in North Georgia.

Meteorologists say temperatures should creep toward normal lows near 30 and highs in the low 50s through the middle of next week. By Friday night, yet another weather system could produce some light snow. But forecasters are quick to add that any precipitation threat pales in comparison to what took place last weekend.

“You’re right there on the edge of where the precipitation could be snow,” said Terry Getz, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn. “You can’t say all rain, so that’s why we have to have rain and snow.”

As of 5 p.m. Sunday, a little over 1,300 homes and business were still without power, according to Electric Power Board spokeswoman Lacie Newton. Several of those customers are the result of new outages that occurred Sunday, she said.

“We estimate that many of these power outages will be restored by midnight tonight (Sunday night), Ms. Newton said. “But there will be some customers whose power will not be restored until Monday morning.”

Mr. Getz said the snowstorm was the latest in a month of dramatic weather events.

“We’ve been in kind of an active weather pattern where we’ve had storm systems that could produce precipitation about every two or three days,” he said. “And we’ve had a colder than normal air mass in place, so the storm chances have been favorable. You end up getting the wintry precipitation.”