Winter is well underway in the northern hemisphere, but the Peach State hasn’t gotten the memo.
Another spell of near-record high temperatures will continue through Friday. Across much of Georgia, temps are expected to climb into the 70s, about 15-25 degrees above normal and potentially tying or even setting record marks for those dates.
Thursday is off to a foggy start in metro Atlanta. A dense fog advisory is in place until 10 a.m. for the state’s northwest quadrant. In Atlanta, afternoon temps will reach about 70 degrees.
“It’s going to feel more like spring,” Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Eboni Deon said. “At least through the end of the work week, you can expect to see warmer weather.”
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Friday is expected to be the warmest day of the week, with a projected high of 73 degrees. That would break the 72-degree record set in 1949, according to the National Weather Service. The city’s temperatures have been documented since 1878.
Columbus and Macon could see temps top 76 on Friday, according to the Weather Service.
On Wednesday, the city’s high temp peaked at 70 degrees. The record is 72, set in 1989.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
It’s the second warm wave since Christmas Eve, when Atlanta reached a balmy 78 degrees. That obliterated the city’s 73-degree record for that day, which had been set in 2016.
Typically, Atlanta sees highs dip from an average of 56 degrees in December to 54 in January.
The unusual warmth shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. It lines up with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s winter weather outlook, which predicted higher-than-average temperatures across the Southeast from December through February.
It’s still winter, though, and sandwiched between the warm waves have been blasts of frigid cold weather. We’ll see that pattern again as a cold front arrives late this week, nose-diving low temps into the 30-degree range next week.
Along that cold front is a line of showers the NWS predicts could bring excessive rainfall to parts of North Georgia and potentially cause flash flooding in some areas. Those storms should arrive Friday into Saturday morning.
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