ATLANTA SNOW: Plunging Temperatures Could Refreeze Wet Roads

Temperatures rose above the freezing mark Saturday afternoon, finally thawing the roads out.

Severe Weather Team 2 meteorologist Brad Nitz said temperatures will return to the mid to upper 20s overnight into Sunday morning, increasing the likeliness of slick spots to refreeze.

"We should expect some patches of ice Sunday morning but it shouldn't be as widespread as it was Saturday," said Nitz.

The Georgia Department of Transportation urged motorists to take caution if they need to drive on the roads.

“Even though it is sunny outside, the roadways may still have slick patches so we are encouraging people to stay off the roads,” said GDOT Commissioner Vance C. Smith Jr.

The GDOT reported Saturday that all metro roads are open and passable but motorists still need to use extreme caution on bridges and overpasses as they are icy. Crews continue to monitor icy spots.

The GDOT anticipated that due to low temperatures, bridges and overpasses will refreeze Saturday; so motorists should exercise extreme caution.

A 20-mile stretch of Interstate 85 in Jackson County was shut down in both directions from Friday night until Saturday morning.

When GDOT crews finally reopened I-85 about 7:45 a.m. the backup was so long, they expect it to take hours for traffic to get back to normal. Some frustrated drivers abandoned their vehicles on the road and tow trucks were called in to get them off the highway Saturday morning. DOT officials said they had to go car-to-car waking up sleeping drivers.

MARTA has reopened its bus service after icy roads forced the service to halt. MARTA trains continue to run.

Greyhound said they were experiencing delays and cancellations in Atlanta because of ice. Amtrak said they were operating a normal schedule into Atlanta.

“Now more than ever, it is critical that people stay off the roadways, if it is not an emergency,” Smith wrote in an e-mail sent to WSB-TV Channel 2. “We are treating roads and they are refreezing due to the low temperatures in many areas. Especially in the metro area, we are seeing many icy spots on the roadways.”

Hundreds of schools, businesses and churches were closed on Saturday. To see a full list of those closings click here.

CHECK: Updated Closings List

Ice is reported on most side streets and some highways and interstates in the metro Atlanta area. They are expected to stay that way until temperatures climb.

"We are not going to get above freezing until mid-day," said Severe Weather Team 2 meteorologist Brad Nitz. "There's a lot of ice out there; it's treacherous."

Many roads have reopened around Georgia due to the warming temperatures and sun. For the latest list of the closed roads from the DOT click here.

Closed Roads

DOT crews are working 12-hours shifts, trying to keep roads clear.

Motorists are strongly encouraged to stay off the roadways and slow down, reducing driving speeds by half. They should leave, at least a 10-car-length distance between their vehicles and the DOT trucks clearing the roadways. Motorists are also advised to treat any traffic signal that is not working as a four-way stop, and to be aware of black ice, especially on bridges and overpasses.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said city of Atlanta crews would also be out checking roads.

"We have begun spreading a mixture of sand and salt over all bridges and overpasses," Reed said in an e-mail sent to Channel 2 Action News.

Reed added that the first priority was major streets such as Peachtree Street, Northside Drive, and Mitchell Street.

After a cold Saturday, more snow is forecast for north Georgia on Sunday.

The afternoon commute home was a dangerous one for tens of thousands of drivers.

The combination of heavy snow and rush-hour traffic slowed commuters across metro Atlanta to a crawl. Some drivers reported commutes that took eight hours or more. A few reported spending the night in their cars.

Even before the first flake fell, flights were canceled Friday at the world's busiest airport in Atlanta. A Starbucks on the Gulf Coast closed for the day, citing a steady drizzle and temperatures in the mid-30s as "inclement weather." Classes were canceled nearly everywhere.

As much as 7 inches fell in central South Carolina, one of the hardest-hit areas. The powder wasn't expected linger, though, like it has in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. That region was hit with back-to-back blizzards in the past week that dumped 3 feet of snow.

The Southern snow knocked out power to thousands and caused hundreds of accidents. Near Montgomery, Ala., a car plunged off an icy road into a pond, killing two brothers ages 4 and 2, State Trooper Kevin Cook said. The boys' mother, who was driving, survived.

In the Dallas area, students celebrated the day off.

"I was like, yes!" said 14-year-old Ashleigh Hartsock, a high school student in suburban Frisco whose Facebook page was going crazy with messages rejoicing over the school closure.

She was among many Texans who braved the cold with a comical lack of winter gear. In a city that gets an average of 2 inches of snow a year, heavy boots, thick gloves and sleds were scarce.

Several kids at a Frisco park attempted to sled down a slight incline that passes for a hill in the Dallas area. Wearing knit gloves covered in plastic baggies and grocery bags over their tennis shoes, they rode garbage can lids, tops to plastic containers and pieces of cardboard.

"If they have to miss a school day, at least they can get out in it and have some fun," said Lauren Harbour, whose children, ages 10, 8 and 6, were trying out the various makeshift sleds.

Federal forecasters said every state but Hawaii had snow on the ground somewhere Friday, a freakishly rare occurrence. It was even snowing along East Coast beach towns.

"I knew it could happen, but I didn't expect much snow down here," said Frank Pinter, Savannah's street maintenance supervisor, who moved here four years ago from northern Ohio. "It's such an unusual event for this area, we don't maintain a stockpile of salt or anything."

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Airlines scrapped more than 1,800 flights, many of them at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which sees 2,700 arrivals and departures on an average day. Of that total, hundreds were halted at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, which got more than a foot of snow from Thursday into Friday.

The cancelations quickly jammed up air traffic around the country.

"It's frustrating," said Russ Cereola, a New York salesman trying to fly home from Atlanta. "There's no snow on the ground yet, and they're canceling flights. Now I understand inbound stuff is probably canceled, but this is a little nuts."

Many places were seeing snow for the first time in a generation or longer, and some people weren't quite sure what to do.

"We don't even sell snow shovels. They'd have to go to the old-time coal shovels, which is the closest thing I have," said Todd Friddle, the manager at a Lowe's home-improvement store in the Charleston, S.C., suburb of Mount Pleasant.

In the Florida Panhandle town of Century, 44-year-old Steve Pace scraped some snow from the hood of his truck and formed a snowball to throw at his 6-year-old grandson, Kaleb. It snowed for only about 10 minutes before giving way to rain again, but it was enough.

"I've only ever seen snow on TV till now," Kaleb said, smiling.

For the first time in its 88-year history, Grandview Florist in the Panhandle community of Gonzalez had to reschedule Valentine's Day deliveries for winter weather. Owner Marie Pierce, 77, managed the chaos while creating arrangements from lilies and roses in the back of the rural shop.

"The schools and some businesses are closed, so we are sending our drivers to customers' homes instead," said Pierce, whose grandmother started the shop in 1923.

Schools all over metro Atlanta released students early, giving them a chance to get home before the snow turned roads dangerous.

As of 9 p.m. Friday, about 2,400 people in Georgia were without power, over half of them in metro Atlanta. Outages were due to tree limbs falling on power lines due to the weight of snow.