The view from the 17th Street bridge in Midtown Atlanta as snow arrives on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Patrick Saunders/WABE)
Alessandra Tarantino / Alessandra Tarantino
This story was updated on Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 7:53 p.m.
Snow began falling in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon as part of a system that led schools and flights to be canceled, government facilities shut down and MARTA bus and streetcar service to be suspended.
The metro Atlanta counties of Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb and Clayton were upgraded from a winter weather advisory to a winter storm warning running through 7 a.m. Wednesday. An area of Central and South Georgia from Columbus to Macon to Savannah remains under a winter storm warning and could see up to 5 inches of snow, according to GEMA meteorologist Will Lanxton.
The National Weather Service expanded the winter storm warning area northward to Atlanta on the afternoon of Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Graphic via NWS)
Snow began falling in Atlanta shortly after 2 p.m. Tuesday and continued until about 5 p.m.
There were over 260 flight cancellations and over 700 flight delays at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as of about 7:50 p.m., according to FlightAware. MARTA suspended bus and streetcar service due to hazardous road conditions around 4 p.m.
A MARTA bus drives down 17th Street in Atlantic Station on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. MARTA suspended bus and streetcar service shortly after this picture was taken due to hazardous road conditions. (Patrick Saunders/WABE)
Georgia officials warned people to get off the roads by early Tuesday afternoon ahead of a storm that they compared to “Snowmageddon,” the storm that paralyzed the Deep South in 2014.
“This could deteriorate really quickly like it did in 2014,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Tuesday morning at a press conference at Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency (GEMA) headquarters.
“Get to where you’re going to be for the next day or two by early this afternoon,” GEMA’s Lanxton said.
Officials are worried about the snow melting and refreezing.
“If that precipitation hits the ground, melts and refreezes, all of a sudden you’re going to have a lot of chaos on the roadways,” Kemp said.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (center) and other state officials held a press conference at Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security headquarters on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Rahul Bali/WABE)
Georgia state offices, the Capitol, and surrounding areas in Atlanta will be closed Wednesday, Kemp announced Tuesday afternoon.
The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) started pretreating roads with brine on Sunday. They had about 450 snowplows ready to go ahead of the storm, according to GDOT Commissioner Russell McMurry.
McMurry said that while this storm does remind him of 2014, GDOT got “a lot more” brine down on the roads before it arrived.
GEMA Director Chris Stallings said there is one death they can attribute to the winter weather.
“We do have one reported death due to hyperthermia from a critical needs patient that got outside [Monday] night,” he said.
It’s unclear where in the state that death occurred.
Stallings advised people to let their faucets drip, keep an eye on pets and older loved ones and prepare for potential power outages.
Cars travel through Atlantic Station in Midtown Atlanta on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Patrick Saunders/WABE)
Kemp issued a state of emergency on Monday that is in effect through Jan. 28. Schools closed or moved to virtual learning across metro Atlanta on Tuesday. The Georgia State Capitol and other state offices in the surrounding area are also closed.
The City of Atlanta opened two warming centers Sunday night that will remain open through Wednesday afternoon. The centers are at the Central Park Recreation Center on Merritts Avenue and Selena S. Butler Park on W.M. Holmes Borders Drive. The Butler Park warming center is for women and children only.
The Old Adamsville Recreation Center on Delmar Lane will serve as an overflow location.
This is the second time in 2025 that snow fell in Atlanta. A winter storm hit the city on Jan. 10 that led to Georgia being placed under a state of emergency order and canceled schools, flights and more.