Although Gilmer County experienced what many would consider a minor amount of wintry precipitation late Sunday and early Monday morning, heavy wind gusts that ushered in snow and sleet brought down trees leading to widespread power outages.
“Compared to what they were predicting, it was relatively light,” said Jim Smith, Gilmer County Public Works director about the amount of snow that actually fell. “The eastern and southeastern parts of the county seemed to be the worst hit, the closer you got to Dawson or Lumpkin County because they got hit worse than we did.”
Smith said the county road department began preparing for the winter weather on Thursday. A mix of rock salt and sand was put on several county roads including Doublehead Gap, Yukon, Big Creek and Burnt Mountain Road.
“We had our salt spreaders, snowplow and all the equipment hooked up. By Friday when we left, we were ready,” Smith said. “(There were) lots of trees down. It was mostly downed trees because of the high winds, not so much the snow. Between us and the fire department, we pretty well had it handled. Of course when trees are over a power line, we can’t touch it.”
Stacey Fields, of Amicalola Electric, said power outages started being reported around 3 a.m. Sunday morning, mainly in the eastern part of the county.
By Monday, crews had worked to restore power in several areas including Highway 382, Round Top, Old Burnt Mountain Road, Highway 282, Highway 52 East, Tickanetley Road, Southern Road, Big Creek Road, Clear Creek Road, Talona Road and Henry Evans Road.
As of Monday, about 235 Amicalola EMC members in Gilmer were still without power, mainly in the Bucktown and Cohutta Forest Road areas, Fields noted. By that time, 11 broken power poles had been counted in Gilmer County.
“We’re making good progress. As long as nothing unforeseen happens, we expect most of the outages to be restored within the next 24 hours,” said Fields on Monday.
As for state roads and bridges, Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) crews began treating them Friday morning and throughout the weekend while also clearing debris as needed, said Joe Schulman, of GDOT’s district 6 office.
By Sunday morning, GDOT crews had spread more than 1.5 million gallons of brine and 2,600 tons of salt on interstates, state routes and bridges in northeast Georgia and metro Atlanta, where accumulation was expected, noted Schulman.
“The planning and dedication of all our crews kept the roads safe throughout the event, and we had only a few road closures at higher elevations,” he added.
Highway 52 near the Murray County line was among those closures, and that stretch of road still remained closed on Tuesday, Schulman said.