Deep freeze looms for Monday. Ice remains a concern, especially for higher elevations

Staff Photo by Seth Carpenter / Ricky Raines, an employee for Chattanooga's Public Works Department, distributes salt from a mound of about 5,000 tons in order to use it in a brine solution. The city of Chattanooga was prepping its roads with a brine solution to mitigate icing from the incoming winter storm. Staff Photo by Seth Carpenter / Ricky Raines, an employee for Chattanooga's Public Works Department, distributes salt from a mound of about 5,000 tons in order to use it in a brine solution. The city of Chattanooga was prepping its roads with a brine solution to mitigate icing from the incoming winter storm.

By Ben Benton January 22, 2026 6 min read

Significant snow is almost out of the forecast for most of the Chattanooga region, and more focus is on higher elevations where a quarter- to a half-inch of ice could coat roads, trees and power lines on Signal, Lookout and Monteagle mountains.

As Chattanooga and the rest of the state braced for the storm Thursday, Gov. Bill Lee declared a state of emergency for all 95 Tennessee counties. He encouraged residents to prepare for snow, ice, freezing rain and prolonged freezing temperatures, according to a press release.

The most significant snow now is predicted for the northern half of the state, along the Kentucky state line and the northern ends of the Interstate 75 corridor and the Interstate 81 corridor north of Knoxville, National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Dalton said in a Thursday afternoon online weather briefing.

Forecast temperatures across the Chattanooga region will be near freezing the last half of the day Saturday and above freezing all day Sunday, but they will plunge into the teens Monday morning without rising above freezing until the deep freeze relents Tuesday with a predicted high of 39, Dalton said. That’s still days away, though.