About this time last year, the county was barely thawed out from a single-digit deep freeze over Christmas week.
It was warmer temperatures coupled with heavy rain and wind that made for dangerous weather conditions Tuesday Jan. 9.
The early morning storm initially prompted a two-hour delay for Gilmer schools, which turned into a school system-wide closing.
“Tuesday’s closing was originally scheduled to be a delayed opening based on the potential of high wind gusts that could affect bus service. Starting at around 4 a.m., we were monitoring the overnight conditions and out assessing school buildings and road conditions,” said Gilmer Schools Superintendent Dr. Brian Ridley. “Although there was no damage to our facilities, and road conditions appeared to be acceptable, the number of power outages, continuing rain, gusting winds and potential for flash flooding were still cause for concern.”
Gilmer Deputy Fire Chief Jason Bryant said fire and rescue crews were dealing mainly with fallen trees and power lines in multiple places all over the county, as well as a few motor vehicle accidents Monday night and Tuesday morning, but there were no reports of major storm damage.
“Anytime we have a storm and winds, those kinds of things will go up anyway,” he added.
More than 3,000 locations in Amicalola Electric’s Gilmer County service area were without power, while more than 6,000 outages awaited response in the power company’s larger service area early Tuesday morning. Georgia Power reported around 200 of its customers were still affected by outages during the same time period.
Most of the local outages were in the northern and eastern parts of the county, noted Stacey Fields, Amicalola EMC representative.
“We are aware of at least two broken poles in our service area. Crews have worked all night and will continue working to restore power, as long as conditions are safe enough to do so,” said Fields on Tuesday morning.
Some Ellijay and East Ellijay residents reported measuring 2 or more inches of rain on their rain gauges between Monday night and Tuesday morning.
Less than two months ago, Gilmer was in extreme level 3 drought conditions following a dry summer and mostly dry fall. Recent rainfall helped reduce that classification to level 2 severe drought, according to the Georgia Drought Monitor.
In another winter weather twist, possible snow flurries and falling temperatures were on the forecast for the remainder of this week.