Rare Heavy Snow, Deep Chill Grip States in the Deep South

A rare deep chill and snowfall held the South in its mitts for a second day Sunday. Churches canceled services in Georgia and Alabama and homeless shelter cots were in demand in Kentucky.

In Georgia, as much as 8 1/2 inches of snow fell south and east of Atlanta from a storm starting Saturday night, and people jammed stores to stock up on bread, canned goods, milk and other supplies.

“We sold a lot of film,” Carolyn Dickinson, manager of the Majik Market in Hampton, Ga., said Sunday. “I guess people are taking a lot of snow pictures.”

Much of the snow melted Sunday in Georgia and Alabama as temperatures reached 40 degrees. But the National Weather Service said the melted snow probably would refreeze overnight as temperatures dropped into the lower 20s, causing hazardous driving conditions for today’s rush hour.

Bad weather across Mississippi let up Sunday after the storm pelted the state with ice, sleet and as much as six inches of snow in the north. Early morning lows ranged from near 20 degrees in the north to the low 30s in the south.

Further north, police searched Sunday for the mother of a newborn girl left outside a Columbus, Ohio, hospital as the wind chill dropped to 1 below zero.

Hospital workers found a baby girl just a day or two old in a car seat Saturday night outside the Urgent Medical Care center in Columbus, police officer Harold Brown said. The temperature then was 11 degrees and the wind chill 1 below zero.

No information was left with the baby, Brown said. The infant was admitted to Children’s Hospital for observation and was in fair condition Sunday.