Atlanta Has Already Closed Schools For 2 Days As More Snow Threatens South

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The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for Atlanta, predicting up to an inch of snow between Monday evening and Tuesday evening, along with sleet and freezing rain on Wednesday.

In response, the city's public schools will close on both Tuesday and Wednesday, Atlanta Public Schools has announced.

Only "essential personnel" are expected to show up to work. All after-school activities, sporting events, and community meetings scheduled for Monday have been cancelled.

The strong reaction to a storm that doesn't sound too terrible isn't surprising given the disastrous traffic jams that brought the city to a standstill at the end of January, in similar conditions.

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal tool the blame for the problems and promised better preparation for future storms, saying, "We will be much more cautious and much more aggressive in terms of taking action in advance of future situations."

Keeping students staying home is an easy way to preemptively ease traffic. Part of the problem with last month's response to the storm was that just about all the public schools closed at once, in the middle of the day. That generated a mass rush by parents trying to pick up their kids. "There was not a whole lot of coordination," Larken McCord, a local teacher, told Business Insider.

This time, officials aren't' taking any risks.