Weekend Snow Looking Likely
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Beginning in the wee hours of Saturday morning, Anderson County could see a covering of snow, perhaps a great deal of it, arriving under cover of night and settling in for the weekend.
The first flakes are expected to cross the border from the mountains into the foothills, where the snow will take hold, and, with the air colder, the ground more willing to accept the bargain. By the small hours of Saturday morning, the Piedmont—Anderson included—should find itself beneath a deepening, whitening sky, as the storm organizes and begins to show its character: not a sloppy Southern slush, but a dry, powdery snow more often associated with places that have learned to expect such things.
The math favors snow. Snow-to-liquid ratios in the range of 15:1 or higher mean that modest moisture will be spun into generous accumulations, not in conversational flurries the area normally might see in January, but in inches that bend branches and redraw landscapes. For Anderson and the adjoining foothills, more than two inches appears not just possible but likely, while heavier, localized bands may carve narrow corridors of deeper accumulation, in the sort of arbitrary favoritism that winter storms are known to show. Before the snow fully asserts itself, a prelude of rain or a rain-snow mix may briefly glaze roads and sidewalks, laying down a thin, treacherous underlayer that no one will see until they feel it underfoot or under tire.
On Saturday in Anderson temperatures are expected to remain below freezing throughout the day, while a persistent wind—with gusts greater than 20 mph—will rearrange the light, powdery snow into new drifts and momentary white curtains, reducing visibility and turning ordinary drives into small negotiations with risk. By nightfall, the cold sharpens further: lows sink into the teens, and a wind that strips away any illusion of comfort, pushing wind chills toward the single digits to near zero.
It is in the aftermath, roads that are merely hazardous during the storm harden into rutted, slick, frozen surfaces overnight; what melts in the thin warmth of Sunday (forecast high of 37) afternoon refreezes with a kind of grim efficiency by dawn. For Anderson, the cold will linger beyond the drama of the storm itself, with lows in the teens or below at least through Tuesday, when sunny daytime highs are expected to reach the upper 40s.
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