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* Winter’s woes: Spotty snow forecasts turn to spots of ice in Chattanooga area* State of emergency declared in Tennessee after storm brings icy conditions* Icy roads cause delay in Times Free Press newspaper deliveries
Tuesday school closings, delays
* Athens City Schools will be closed. * Baylor will be closed. * Bradley County Schools will be closed. * Catoosa County Schools will be closed.* Chattanooga State State’s Main (Amnicola) and East (Lee Highway) campuses will open at 10:30 a.m. Sequatchie/Bledsoe, Kimball and Dayton/Rhea locations will be closed. * Chickamauga City Schools will be closed. * Christian Heritage of Dalton will be closed. * Cleveland City Schools will be closed. * Dade County schools are closed. * Dalton City Schools will be closed. * Hamilton County Schools will be closed. * GPS will be closed. * Grundy County Schools will be closed. * Marion County Schools will be closed. * McCallie will be closed. * Meigs County Schools will be closed. * Richard Hardy Memorial School will be closed. * Rhea County Schools will be closed. * Virginia College will be closed. * Walker County schools are closed. * Whitfield County Schools will be closed. * Chattooga County Schools will delay opening 2 hours. * Dalton State is delayed until 10 a.m. * Georgia Northwestern Technical College will delay opening until 11:00 a.m. * UTC will delay opening until 10 a.m.
Other Tuesday closings, delays
* The Tennessee General Assembly will be closed Tuesday. All legislative offices will be closed and committee meetings are cancelled. * North Georgia Health District office in Dalton, Ga., and public health departments in Cherokee, Fannin, Gilmer, Murray, Pickens and Whitfield Counties will delay opening until 11 a.m. * Walker County Transit will be closed. * CHI Memorial reports opening delays of 10 and 11 a.m. at many facilities. Chattanooga Heart Institute opens at noon. The Hixson Infusion Center will be closed and nursing orientation is canceled * Chattanooga city employees will have a 9 a.m. start time.
A little hot air blew away all that talk about snowpocalypses and states of emergency in North Georgia.
The region’s residents refreshed their weather apps early and often this weekend, watching to see if snow would hit their streets and cripple transportation systems. Instead, they awoke Monday to a gray, rainy day.
The end of times, this was not.
Experts thought there was a 50/50 chance of a storm over the weekend. Then they thought it was imminent, with at least an 80 percent chance that it would hit. On Sunday, the governor declared a state of emergency and forecasters issued a winter storm warning. Residents went to bed expecting the worst when they awoke.
But overnight, the experts backed away, saying the storm wouldn’t hit after all.
So what happened? Well, weather happened. Even the most seasoned meteorologist will tell you how fickle the future can be.
For the most part, local governments kept ticking Monday without a problem. Dade County employees didn’t work, but only because they were taking Presidents Day off anyway, County Executive Ted Rumley said.
Catoosa County offices were open. So were Chattooga and Whitfield county offices Walker County, meanwhile, closed at noon.
Walker County Commissioner Bebe Heiskell didn’t return a call Monday afternoon, but she wrote on her Facebook page that she was closing the offices because of “worsening weather conditions.” Meteorologists weren’t predicting anything too drastic at that point, but some county employees might live in the mountains, which are more vulnerable to dangerous ice formations.
Forecasters first warned residents of snowfall on Friday. The next day around 4 p.m., meteorologists with the National Weather Service’s Peachtree City office issued a winter storm watch.
Every office’s definition of a “winter storm” is different because every state has different infrastructure. While officials in New York might spit at a couple inches of snow, that same amount could cripple a southern state. Remember those pictures of Atlanta highways gridlocked for several days?
In Peachtree City’s office, a “winter storm” hits the area when there is 2 inches of snow, a half inch of sleet or quarter inch of freezing rain. Meteorologists issue a storm “watch” 12-48 hours beforehand if they believe there is greater than a 50 percent chance the storm will actually occur.
On Sunday morning, Gov. Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency for 15 North Georgia counties, including Catoosa, Dade, Walker and Whitfield. He instructed non-emergency state workers to stay home Monday. Deal was widely criticized last year when government officials didn’t prepare for the snowfall that paralyzed Atlanta’s traffic.
Hours later, around 3:30 p.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service upgraded the storm watch to a storm “warning.” A warning is in effect when there is greater than an 80 percent chance the storm is going to actually happen.
And then, nothing. At 4:20 a.m. Monday, the National Weather Service downgraded the warning to a “winter advisory,” meaning rain would leave most area roads with about 1/10th of an inch of ice. There would be more ice in elevated areas.
Basically, National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Willis said, the weather would cause an inconvenience for drivers. Nothing drastic. Nothing like what he thought it would be two days earlier.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty in forecasting,” he said. “The weather in the South in particular is challenging.”
This region is tough to predict, he said, because the temperature profile from the ground to the sky can’t make up its mind. Near the ground, it can be 28 degrees — ready for snow. But a couple thousand feet up, it can be 45 degrees.
In a case like that, the precipitation starts as rain and doesn’t cool down until it’s close to the ground. When that happens, the result is freezing rain instead of snow.
On Monday, wind from the Gulf of Mexico threw off Georgia’s predicted weather. The wind was bringing hot air that would offset a cold front that first hit North Georgia on Saturday.
Forecasters had thought the hot air would come later, after precipitation fell. In other words, after the snow. Instead, the air came fast.
And all you got was some water.
Contact Staff Writer Tyler Jett at tjett@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476.