By Carolyn Badaracco

Even though March is just days away, Georgia isn’t out of the pine forest yet. According to reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Washington, February is a peak month for winter storms.

Late February storms in particular, can mean powerful Nor’easters like the one descending upon the Northeast now. And ice storms in the South can also rear up as a result of cold air tangling with warmer, moist air at this time of year.

Each time a storm clears in Georgia, certain areas of economic impact are assessed. At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, for instance, 11Alive.com reported that more than 1,000 flights were cancelled on Jan. 25, 2026, and nearly 200 delays accompanied them. By Jan. 31, 2026, another weather event brought 600 more cancellations, with ripple effects felt far and wide.

The smaller picture

Winter weather also impacts Georgia on a smaller economic scale—in family-owned restaurants and at neighborhood grocery stores, for instance. And while these types of impacts may not be tracked or even traceable, they still impact Georgia businesses’ bottom lines.

No matter where winter weather strikes, Georgia’s northern cities, in particular, are about as ready as they’ve ever been, according to Peter Bluestone, Ph.D., associate director of the Center for State and Local Finance (CSLF) at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Broadly, the CSLF’s goal is to connect policymakers, academics and practitioners in public finance through innovative public policy research and consulting. 

Bluestone says the paralyzing snow and ice wrought by “Snowpocalypse” in January 2014 can take the credit for the heightened preparedness and vigilance in the metro region today. And yet, every winter storm will take its economic toll — with impacts that can be difficult to measure and define – no matter how diligently the region prepares.

“Winter storms, for lack of a better analogy, are a little like mini episodes of COVID,” Bluestone said. “They act to keep people indoors, and prior to them people go to the store and stock up on everything.”

Grocery stores heat up intermittently

Unlike some businesses, grocery retailers don’t lose money because of winter storms, and they tend to get an unnaturally large influx of shoppers leading into a storm.

“Consumers get into a mindset of consuming at home,” Bluestone said.

“For retailers like grocery stores though, maybe people bought two loaves of bread instead of just one, and it turned out they could go out after all and they didn’t need both,” Bluestone said. “Maybe they just put one in the freezer and they don’t buy a loaf next week.”

Or, flash back to COVID-19 when people bought up mountains of toilet paper. 

“You ended up not needing all that, and so you don’t buy it the next time,” Bluestone said. “There’s just some shifting.” 

It’s the same story for liquor stores.

Dining dies out

Restaurants in Georgia, on the other hand, take a direct hit when a snow or ice storm visits the South.

“It’s harder to shift with restaurant meals,” Bluestone said. “You don’t go out twice as much after the storm passes, and restaurants count on a certain amount of days for people to be dining. It’s hard to make that up in full.”

Uncertainty seems to kill people’s appetites when there’s a looming weather event. As Bluestone framed it, “restaurants lose out when the storm comes or when people perceive a storm is coming.” 

Events evaporate 

While grocery shopping shifts and restaurant meals fail to materialize for a number of days, events can simply evaporate altogether due to an impending storm. Some are tremendous in size—such as those held at the Georgia World Congress Center and Savannah Convention Center, which CSLF works with to estimate the impact of their economic activities in Georgia and on the communities around them. 

Countless other events are small and select, though. A Dave Chappelle show at Atlanta Comedy Theater in 2025, for instance, or Paul Chowdhry at Buckhead Theatre in 2026 to name just two affected. And then there are more specialized events that draw huge crowds, like the annual Braves Fest at Truist Park, cancelled on Jan, 31, 2026. 

“Events will get cancelled, and some of these things really can’t be rescheduled for various reasons,” Bluestone noted. “The amount of business activity that’s associated with various kinds of events that get cancelled—that activity likely won’t happen again.”

The business lost around cancelled events—ones that don’t get rescheduled within a given year—is nearly impossible to quantify.

Hospitality falters

When severe winter weather hits hard, people can get stranded – not only residents trying to get from point A to point B, but tourists and other travelers. This is yet another lesson that Snowpocalypse cemented in Georgia residents’ minds. 

“[Travelers] can’t get into the city, and they can’t get to their hotels,” Bluestone said. “So there’s a potential loss of economic activity that tends to revolve around the hospitality sector.” 

Whereas severe storms’ impacts on growing seasons for agriculture and crops can be measured, and local government roadway spending during a storm or downed power line cleanup costs can be measured, some economic activity remains a mystery. “The hospitality sector, restaurants, entertainment, those are definitely the losers. But the full extent of the economic cost is harder to quantify,” Bluestone said.