SEO Product Manager Michael Cohen moved to Atlanta from California in August 2024. Here are his thoughts as he experienced his first snowfall when Winter Storm Cora coated the city with a little more than 2 inches of snow last week.

As far back as Dec. 28, rumors were swirling about a big storm heading for Atlanta. Some were dubbing it the “snowpocalypse.”

“A foot of snow in Atlanta?” asked one Reddit post on its “Georgia” page, citing claims from various models, predicting a storm on Jan. 9 or 10 with 17 inches of snow.

All over social media, stories of this potential event were spreading. In response, the next day there was a wave of backlash against this far-flung hype. Articles including Forbes’ “The Fallout Of Viral Snow Forecast Posts On Social Media were published, and digital meteorologists at weather.com (correctly) stated that you can’t accurately predict the level of snow four days in advance, let alone two weeks.

So with that, I put the fear of a storm behind me.

Living much of my life in California and Florida has given me the opportunity to experience much of what nature has to throw at us when it comes to weather. I have experienced countless hurricanes since the age of 9, starting with Hurricane Andrew. In college, I watched as lightning struck the building next to me as I was outside. In California, where I lived much of my adulthood, I felt the Earth move from powerful earthquakes and felt the heaviness from wildfire smoke in the air.

But I had never truly experienced snow. I once drove through some while crossing Colorado in May, and have hiked through some in Lassen National Park, but never looked out my window to see it falling from the sky. That was about to change in one of the most unlikely of places, as Winter Storm Cora headed toward my new home, the city of Atlanta, packing what those in the area would consider serious snowfall.

T-Minus 2 Days

I wake up to a 24-degree morning on Wednesday, Jan. 8. This makes it the second coldest day I have ever experienced. I put on my fleece-lined jeans, long socks and a thick flannel shirt I have been saving up for just an occasion. It is cold, but no ice or snow has fallen yet, as Cora has yet to descend upon the South.

I head to work, but my commute is a crawl. Even without snow or ice on the roads, drivers continue to travel 10 mph below the speed limit.

The office is fortunately very warm, and spirits are high among the content team, with whom I work. Having just relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area, I’m familiar with microclimates – where the difference in temperature between two blocks can be 10 degrees. My coworkers clue me in that north of the city will possibly get inches of snow, whereas my location in Midtown will most likely be getting an ice storm.

Ice. Storm. Now that sounds much worse. I have no idea what an ice storm means.

I’m horrified and my thoughts are racing as my coworkers inform me about what I can expect:

1. There is a chance I could lose power. This is something I can’t even imagine, as my heater is blasting nonstop while I’m home. The idea of not having heat when temperatures will be in the 20s is genuinely scary. I begin looking up “warming shelters,” which is likewise an alien concept. I know of storm shelters for hurricanes, but didn’t even think of cold weather shelters.
2. I’ve never driven on ice, and only once in snow, so I nix the idea of heading to a shelter. I’m staying put. That means I now have to get firewood for my fireplace. I am also thankful I have a tent and sleeping bag – as a worst-case scenario, I can set that up inside my home and keep warm with every blanket I have, and stay put.

I start to worry about all the creature comforts at risk. Will I be able to heat my meals? Luckily I have a lot of non-perishables at home. I have a portable battery to charge my cellphone. With no internet and no television, I could build some of my Lego sets to kill time.

Another coworker regales us with stories of waiting in line at the local grocery store for over an hour trying to check out with milk, bread and eggs. I vow to go stock up on my lunch break tomorrow.

T-Minus 1 Day

Today doesn’t feel as cold as yesterday.

On my lunch break, I head out to gather some emergency supplies. I go to a hardware store and purchase three bunches of firewood, some fire starter, and some holiday candles that are luckily on sale.

Just as my coworker had warned me, the parking lot at the grocery store is swarming. Each row in the lot is full of new customers waiting for a spot to park. I have little choice other than to park on a side street.

I grab a premade lunch – they had parmesan chicken tenders that looked too good to pass up, some sandwich rolls, some lunchmeat and some tinned fish. I already have milk and water, plenty of cookies and enough liquor to stock a cheap wedding, so with this trip, I have the essentials covered.

On my way back, I notice a house on my block with some precut wood on the curb. I decide to help myself to yet more firewood. Who knows how long the power could be out?

The home’s owner comes out and helps me make my selections. She mentions in her 30 years in the neighborhood, the power has only ever gone out briefly – we’re in Midtown Atlanta, and the city works faster here. She does warn that we have to worry less about the ice knocking down a line and more about a driver plowing into a power pole. Atlantans, after all, aren’t used to driving in the snow and ice.

I bid her thanks and farewell as I load the logs into the car.

Needing comfort food, I head home. I make myself a frozen pizza I already have in the freezer and mentally prepare for tomorrow.

Winter Storm Cora Arrives

But I also have to work, so I open my office window blinds and try not to get distracted.

That is proving difficult.

I watch as snow swirls from the sky, accumulating on my porch railing, creeping higher and higher.

The snowflakes grow larger in size. Wow, a tree branch just collapsed under the snow’s weight, causing a flurry to my left.

At this point, I just want to finish with work and take advantage of my first real snow, but I have a few meetings first. We discuss the storm and share our own experiences over the company Slack. Jonathan Belles, one of our meteorologists, has a snowman behind him during a meeting.

I finish my last meeting of the day, grab my Star Wars-themed Legos and get a quick photo session of them in the snow.

It isn’t a foot like some of those earlier predictions. It’s a little more than 2 inches of snow on the ground, but it’s the first accumulation of more than 1 inch in the city since January 2018.

Unfortunately, at this point, the snow has stopped; instead, freezing rain is coming down. Likewise, the snow is starting to melt a bit.

Thankful for my supplies and ongoing electricity, I settle into the coziness of being snowed in. I make a sandwich for lunch, reheat the pizza for dinner and stay busy.

That night, another first: I light a fire in the fireplace. It takes a few starts, but it eventually gets going. I feel accomplished, but more importantly, I feel warm.

1 Day After ‘Snowpocalypse’

The next day, the snow is still there.

But it’s also clearly melting – the sound of water perpetually dripping is barely muffled by my patio door. Snow is dropping by the piles from tree tops and the concrete is peeking from beneath the snow.

But it looks wet and slippery, and it’s Saturday, so I am staying put.

In keeping with the theme, I decide to watch “The Empire Strikes Back” in front of my fireplace. But because of the dying fire and my warm blankets, I do not make it conscious to the end of the movie. I put on something else for the noise, and proceed to keep hibernating until 1 a.m., at which point I lurch over to my bed.

2 Days After ‘Snowpocalypse’

I have a coffee date at 10:30 a.m., so I am finally going to brave the icy roads.

After having a very warm shower, I now have to de-ice my car for the first time ever. It’s still snow-covered, and luckily, I do know the most important thing: Do not use warm water. That is an easy way to have your windshields crack or break.

But I don’t have an ice scraper for my car. A few days ago, one of my coworkers mentioned using cardboard and I attempted that for about a minute, barely making a dent before I took out a metal bowl. I’m able to scrape the snow from my hood, front, and rear windows. There is still some on my roof, but at this point, I need to get moving.

I’m definitely nervous pulling out of the driveway until I see the roads have all been cleared. Snow still remains piled up by the curb and in yards. I’m not finding any slippery patches during my drive, though the plentiful potholes are still present.

I watch each step, carefully navigating the still-icy sidewalks as I make my way to the coffee shop. The shop is warm, the coffee delicious, and the date goes well. There is even a Great Pyrenees inside wearing little snow booties, who I learn is a bit of a local celebrity.

I’m hungry after the date concludes, so I head for some brunch. I opt for a delicious fried catfish, grits and a biscuit. I absolutely take a bite of the filet and make a mouth-watering biscuit sandwich with it.

As I’m walking back to my car, I think to myself, “It’s actually a warm day today.”

I check my Weather Channel app. It’s 41 degrees. It didn’t take long at all for me to get used to the cold.

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — A polar vortex that has hit much of the U.S. with ice and snow has dealt a glancing blow to Florida, dropping coastal temperatures and causing the Sunshine State’s manatee population, still recovering from a mass starvation event several years ago, to seek warmer waters.

Besides inland natural springs, a popular destination for the docile aquatic mammals is the warm-water outflows of about a dozen power plants around Florida. Manatees have been attracted to the warm-water discharges for decades, following a watery travel route that mother manatees have taught to manatee calves. Public viewing areas are located near power plants in Riviera Beach, Fort Myers and Apollo Beach.

Dozens of the sea cows, which can grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) long and 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms), have been congregating for the past week near Florida Power & Light Company’s Riviera Beach plant, where the company opened the Manatee Lagoon attraction in 2016. The two-story, 16,000-square-foot complex is free and open to the public. They’re hosting a family-friendly ManateeFest on Feb. 1.

“Manatees are such a special species that we have in our waters here in Florida, because they are a sentinel species, which means that they’re an indicator for any water problems that we may have or any environmental issues we may have,” Manatee Lagoon education manager Rachel Shanker said. “They’re kind of the first animals to start to respond to any changes in the environment. And because they’re so charismatic, people really take note of that.”

The facility is open all year, but the best chance to see the animals is from Nov. 15 to March 31, when Florida water temperatures can drop below 68 degrees, which is deadly to manatees. While boating collisions are the top man-made threat to manatees, cold stress is the most common natural threat.

“So during the power generation process, that power plant puts out clean, warm water, and that warm water draws the manatees in when it gets cold,” Shanker said.

Ocean water is sucked in from the bay and used to cool the plant, but no chemicals or other substances are added to the water, Shanker said. The warm water discharged from the plant is the same ocean water, just warmer, and completely safe for wildlife.

The number of manatees near the power plant can fluctuate, but Shanker said Friday that the most they’ve counted this year is about 85.

“The manatees come here to Manatee Lagoon for that warm water, but we don’t have a large population of seagrass right here on our property,” Shanker said. “And so they’ll come here to Manatee Lagoon to get warm, then when they start to get hungry, they will travel out to find those seagrass beds, and they’ll go feed until they get full, and they get cold, and they’ll come back to our warm water to get warm.”

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 565 manatee deaths were recorded in 2024, similar to the 555 deaths recorded a year earlier. Those numbers are down significantly from 2021, when officials recorded over 1,100 manatee deaths, mostly caused by starvation. Pollution from farm, urban and other sources has decimated the seagrass on which the animals depend.

“The center of those problems was in the Indian River Lagoon, where over the years, they’ve had these problems with all these algal blooms,” FWC manatee veterinarian Martine de Wit said. “And that affected the water clarity and quality, and seagrass had died off in that area.”

Indian River Lagoon is located along the Atlantic Coast in central Florida. State waters are home to more than 8,000 manatees with at least a third living or migrating through Indian River Lagoon.

State wildlife officials tried to mitigate the casualties by temporarily feeding lettuce to manatees. After two especially deadly winters, seagrass in the area began to recover, and manatee deaths have dropped.

“Seagrass is resilient, and it came back on its own, and manatees found it,” de Wit said.

While overall deaths have come down over the past two years, records show a spike in dead calves for this past year. The seagrass famine left many manatees so malnourished that they were physically unable to reproduce for several years, de Wit said. When the food returned, those previously starving animals all began reproducing at the same time.

“When you have higher pregnancy rates, more manatees being born, you always have a proportion that does not make it,” de Wit said. “I think that was just a measure of the reproduction coming back after all those lean years since 2020.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday rejected efforts by several Florida environmental groups to get the manatees back on the endangered species list. The manatee was downgraded from endangered to threatened in 2017 and will remain in that classification.

Florida’s manatee population is recovering, but officials and residents need to remain vigilant in protecting the threatened species, de Wit said.

“We always look into the future, and there are significant threats to manatees statewide,” de Wit said. “It’s looking better now, but you cannot sit back and watch it unfold, because we know it needs management and conservation efforts to protect them.”

TALLAHASSEE – Saying social media is “facing a reckoning,” Florida fired back Monday against a lawsuit challenging a new state law aimed at keeping children off social media platforms.

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office filed two documents urging a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit and to deny a preliminary injunction that social media industry groups are seeking to block the measure.

The law was one of the highest-profile issues of the 2024 legislative session, with lawmakers saying that addictive social media platforms harm children. But the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, whose members include tech giants such as Google and Meta Platforms, filed the challenge in October, contending the law violates First Amendment rights and that parents should make decisions about children’s social media use.

The state’s filings Monday raised a series of arguments, including that the industry groups do not have legal standing to challenge the law (HB 3) and that the law’s restrictions do not violate speech rights.

“The statute regulates purely commercial activity – transacting with children while using harmful features to addict them,” the state’s attorneys wrote in opposing a preliminary injunction. “Minors have no First Amendment right to contract for products designed to addict them. HB 3 is also a reasonable, content-neutral time, place, and manner restriction. It regulates only the manner in which children engage with social media.”

But in the lawsuit, attorneys for the industry groups said Florida “cannot begin to show that its draconian access restrictions are necessary to advance any legitimate interest it may assert.”

“Parents already have a wealth of tools at their disposal to limit what online services their minor children use, what they can do on those services, and how often they can use them,” the lawsuit said. “Florida may wish that more Floridians shared its own views about whether minors should use ‘social media platforms.’ But while the state may take many steps to protect minors from harm, including by persuading parents to take advantage of tools to limit their minor children’s access to ‘social media platforms,’ it may not take matters into its own hands and restrict access itself.”

The law, which was spearheaded by then-House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. But Moody agreed in November to delay enforcement until Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Wilson rules on the injunction request. Walker has scheduled a Feb. 28 hearing.

The law, in part, seeks to prevent children under age 16 from opening social media accounts on certain platforms – though it would allow parents to give consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to have accounts. Children under 14 could not open accounts.

The law does not name social-media platforms that would be affected. But it includes a definition of such platforms, with criteria related to such things as algorithms, “addictive features” and allowing users to view the content or activities of other users.

The lawsuit repeatedly referred to sites such as YouTube and Facebook – while also saying the law would not apply to services such as Disney+.

“While the law purports to address ‘addictive features,’ it does not restrict access to all mediums that employ similar features to engage their audience,” attorneys for the industry groups wrote. “The law leaves services like Disney+, Hulu, and Roblox uncovered, even though many minors spend hours on those services each day, and even though they employ the same so-called ‘addictive features,’ like personalized algorithms, push notifications, and autoplay. The state’s only evident justification for restricting access to Facebook and YouTube while leaving many other mediums for speech untouched is the state’s apparent belief that the covered websites deliver content the state thinks is particularly harmful.”

The state’s motion to dismiss the case, however, argued the law does not trigger “heightened First Amendment scrutiny.”

“The law limits children from having accounts on platforms that traffic in addiction,” the motion said. “It leaves platforms free to present content to children and adults through non-addictive means and free to present material to children who do not hold accounts. That affects only a child’s ability to ‘enter’ certain online businesses – it does not in any way censor children on the internet.”

If social-media companies violate the law they could face penalties up to $50,000 per violation. The law also would open them to lawsuits filed on behalf of minors.

“Social media is facing a reckoning,” the state’s attorneys wrote in opposing a preliminary injunction. “Because of whistleblowers and leaked internal documents, the public has learned that social-media companies for years have deployed features to addict youth with full awareness of the destruction compulsive use has on children’s mental health.”

Meanwhile, a separate pending lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of another part of the law that requires age verification to try to prevent minors from having access to online pornographic sites. That lawsuit was filed by different plaintiffs.