It's "Snow" Joke -- Flakes in the North Georgia Mountains

Once 'flatlanders' discover our beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia, they are drawn back again and again, and eventually want to buy a cabin up here - either to use as a vacation home, or to retire to permanently.  

Our curvy --and often unpaved -- mountain roads can be somewhat intimidating at the start, and I am often asked how the roads are to navigate in the winter. One of the beauties of our North Georgia  winters is that we get just enough snow -- but not too much. If we get an inch or two overnight, it is typically melted off by the next afternoon, so driving is usually not an issue.

Of course, the winter before last was an anomoly -- we had a record-breaking 11 inches of snow on Christmas Day of 2010! The snow stuck around for several days and did cause some problems on some of the roads at higher elevations. The next two months were also exceptionally snowy, making the Winter of 2010-2011 one of the snowiest on record.

Since we are just two days away from the autumnal equinox (start of fall), and then inevitably winter, I thought it might be a good time to give some pointers for our winter newcomers as to what supplies to have on hand to be prepared for being snow-bound for a day or two:

• Water, one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days, for drinking and sanitation
• Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food
• Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert and extra batteries for both
• Flashlight and extra batteries
• First aid kit

This information comes from Ready.gov, which is an invaluable resource for emergency-preparedness.