Cold Blast Heads To Metro Atlanta

It's a little early for temperatures this cold, according to Meteorologist Ryan Willis, but he says it's not out of the realm of possibility, obviously.

Willis, with the National Weather Service office in Peachtree City says, "if you like cold weather it looks like it's here to stay for a while."

Mention a cold snap, and you conjure up memories of the blizzard from earlier this year. It was late January when a storm paralyzed the southern U.S. leaving motorists stranded on Interstates 75, 85, and 285. Students were stuck on buses, while others slept in school gymnasiums.

This week, metro Atlanta is expected to be under a freeze warning Thursday night into late Friday morning. Willis says, "It'll cover most of north and parts of central Georgia, including all of the metro area with temperatures from the mid 20s to near freezing." According to the meteorologist, "we had a strong cold front push through the state, and it's still pushing through the southern half of the state bringing in much colder temperatures." Willis says it's expected to stick around for the next week or so.

But Willis doesn't expect anything like that of January 2014 saying, "the infusion of the cold weather that we're getting over the next week is much milder than what we experienced last January." It was significantly colder back then, and Willis adds, "there was more moisture and a system working it's way through", reasons why we ended up with several inches of ice and snow.

Across the metro area, Willis says, temperatures will primarily be in the twenties, ranging from 25 across the northern metro area to around 30 across the southeastern part.

For those heading out to football games this weekend Willis says, "you definitely want to wear the jackets and coats, maybe some gloves as well because by the time the games are getting started we'll be down into the thirties."

When the coldest air is in place this weekend, Willis says we won't have any precipitation. "Rain chances do increase Sunday night into Monday", he says, "with widespread moderate rain". But, he says the temperature will have warmed up at that point, so no frozen precip, leaving us, according to Willis, with "a cold, rainy, miserable day."