Winter weather watch extended but doesn’t include Floyd County
Forecasters say wind could be the biggest problem.
The National Weather Service has expanded the winter weather watch area across North Georgia but Floyd County still sits to the west of the watch area, according to meteorologist Kyle Thiem with the Peachtree City office of the NWS.
A wind advisory remains in effect for our area through noon today, the result of the high pressure and low pressure zones coming together.
That creates a scenario where with all of the precipitation of the last three weeks, for trees to topple and take utility lines down with them. Thiem said gusts are possible in the 20-25 mile per hour range.
“That’s definitely the situation,” said Rome Floyd County Emergency Management Director Tim Herrington. “With the soil being saturated, I’ll expect we’ll be dealing with downed trees and power lines.”
Thiem said the forecast for very light snow accumulation has not changed.
The weather system is a wedge that has set up and could cause issues for the northeast mountains. Thiem said a wedge develops when a high pressure system, with a clockwise flow of air, sets up that funnels air from the northeast that rolls up against the mountains.
When that happens, the air spreads out and funnels down the east side of the mountains.
Couple the wedge with a low pressure system, which funnels air counter-clockwise and brings moisture up from the Gulf and you have warmer, moist air flowing over the cold air that is close to the surface and it creates a greater opportunity for freezing precipitation in one form or another.
“That tends to be our worst set up around this region,” Thiem said. “The temperature difference between the land and the sea actually acts to enhance the low pressure system which is the situation similar to what we have here.”
The National Weather Service gauge at Richard B. Russell Regional Airport picked up 0.05 of an inch of rain Friday, another 1.4 inches through 8 p.m. Saturday evening.
The National Weather Service is now projecting that the Oostanaula River will crest in Rome at 20.6 feet — 5 feet below any form of flooding stage, sometime Tuesday morning. The flow of the Oostanaula, as measured at the Turner McCall Bridge was just over 11,000 cubic feet per second Saturday evening.