Staff photo by John Rawlston/Chattanooga Times Free Press – Dec 26, 2010
Tina Terrell and Tim Anderson sled down a hill at the Chickamauga Dam recreation area Sunday afternoon as the Christmas Day snow lingers in the Chattanooga area.The weekend (fittingly) felt a lot like Christmas, but forecasters indicated that spring will be in the air within a few days.
“It’s just crazy,” WRCB meteorologist Nick Austin said Sunday evening.
The 2 to 6 inches of snow that fell Christmas morning hardened into ice on roads and bridges Saturday night.
Austin said he expects flurries to vanish by this morning as temperatures in the upper 30s linger through Monday and Tuesday.
But Wednesday’s jolt to 49 degrees will start a trend that ends at temperatures near 60 for Friday and Saturday, he said.
National Weather Service forecaster Derek Eisentrout in Morristown, Tenn., said, “This period of bad and inclement weather is finally moving off” in favor of high pressure systems accompanied by mild, southern winds.
“That snowy system we got on Christmas moved off the East Coast, New York and Philadelphia — far away from here,” he said.
That system brought blizzard warnings stretching from New Jersey to Maine, The Associated Press reported. Forecasters expected up to 20 inches of snow in Philadelphia and Boston and up to 16 inches in New York City.
The two local forecasters said there’s about a 30 percent chance for light showers on Thursday and Friday, but Austin added he sees no snow ahead “for a while.”
For the near future, Austin warned against hasty travel on mountain roads, saying many will be hazardous until at least Wednesday morning.
“That’s where you’ll have your slick, icy spots before things warm up,” he said. “Until that point Wednesday when things heat up, there won’t be a whole lot of melting.”
National Weather Service spokesman Frank Taylor in Peachtree City, Ga., reported a similar outlook for several counties in Northwest Georgia.
“A lot of changing weather patterns,” he said. “It’s certainly been a challenging time.”