By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
MARCH 2, 2021 | Georgia and Atlanta have experienced relatively warm temperatures this winter. Lucky for us, we didn’t see the extreme low temperatures that hit Texas during January.
While we prefer the warmer climes, we always like to see a fairly low, below freezing, day or two in order to kill the unwanted insects around the yard. But extreme lows haven’t hit Atlanta this year.
So, how cold has it been? This winter, the lowest temperature was December 26, when the mercury was only 22 degrees at Hartsfield-Jackson International airport. Last month, January, 2021,the lowest came on the 10th, coming in at 28 degrees. Compared to what Texas felt last month, that was relatively warm, and certainly did not attack Georgia’s electric grid, as it did Texas.
Here are the lowest Atlanta temperature in recent years:
These temperature extremes were measured at Atlanta’s Hartsfield—Jackson International Airport and go back to 1930. The lowest temperature recorded there during that period was minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit (-21 Celsius) on January 21, 1985. Most of us remember that winter.
Growing up in Macon, where the temperatures are a little more moderate, the coldest day we can remember came about 1955, when it hit nine degrees. In those days, we threw a morning paper route of The Macon Telegraph. You can bet we remember that harsh morning. I had never been so cold in all my life, going as fast as I could to complete the route that frigid day.
In those days, we completed the route near what was then Miller Junior High School for Girls. Just up the street was Forsyth Bakery, and several of us paper boys gathered there when finishing our route, as the doughnuts were coming out of the oven. That day, in particular, those doughnuts were mighty tasteful, but mainly warm.
Some might say the warmer times recently have something to do with climate change. All we know is that in 19 days, we’ll have springtime. We may have already had our coldest weather of this winter.
Have you noticed a remarkable improvement in your postal delivery service lately? For a while during 2020, there was a dramatic slowness in the mail service all across the area. Our house is near the end of our postal route, and where we previously were getting our mail about 4 p.m., for many days the mail was arriving as late as 8 p.m. We started getting the mail out of our postal box the next morning.
Talking to several post(wo)men recently, we think we know the culprit: there were so many political mailers in 2020 that it overwhelmed the local carriers. One carrier told us: “On this route, we normally have about 3,000 pieces of mail a day. We have to ‘case” the mail, that is, put it in the route order of delivery before we leave the post office. Well, sometimes last year there would be so many political mailers that it would hit 10,000 pieces on my route. It just takes much, much longer to case and deliver that much mail. Sometimes I wasn’t getting home until nearly 10 p.m., and we were worn out. It also causes all kinds of disruptions, and often I would not sleep well. And it would be more the next day.”
Good to see the mail back on track.
Tim Anderson, publisher in Fitzgerald, made me laugh out loud recently, when he reported a sign: “Honk if you love Jesus; text if you want to meet him.”
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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