By Mark Woolsey

Stay off the roads.

That’s the overarching message from Cobb County officials, as what they described as “waves” of precipitation moved through the country early Sunday, resulting in icy roadways.

Cobb Department of Transportation crews were out in force treating hundreds of miles of roads. Georgia Department of Transportation crews were treating major roadways such as I-75 and said that the most dangerous conditions were in northeast Georgia. According to Cobb County’s latest storm update, “Crews have dealt with a few trees that have fallen in roadways and scattered power outages are reported.”

In line with that, the National Weather Service published a graphic on its website showing extreme impact in Northeast Georgia and displayed the potential of up to an inch of snow and four-tenths-of-an inch of ice in Cobb County, where an ice storm warning remained in effect.

Freezing rain was falling in northeast Cobb around 1:30 p.m. and GDOT officials said Sunday morning that ice was “really starting to accumulate” on both their vehicles and the roadways.

More could be on the way. National Weather Service radar showed a moderate to heavy band of precipitation stretching from Northeast into Central Georgia, and on back into Alabama and Mississippi and into the northern Gulf.

Towards the southern end of that band, the Storm Prediction Center issued a tornado watch through the afternoon for Southwest Georgia, Southeast Alabama and the Western Florida Panhandle, with warmer air in place there and a cold front pressing east and south.

The nasty weather has led to numerous business and school closings. The Cobb Emergency Management Agency said that county offices, facilities and courts would be closed through Monday. The Cobb County School District said it would be closed on Monday, as did Marietta Schools. Cobb and Douglas Health announced they’d be closed through Monday.

Town Center at Cobb mall said it would be closed through the day and evening and would re-open Monday at noon.

Kennesaw National Battlefield Park is closed.

Cobb EMC’s power outage map showed six outages in the Marietta area, with about 1,229 customers impacted as of 2 p.m.

Despite the Icing, Cobb County Police said they had received no reports of serious accidents and a check of the Georgia511 website showed few, if any wrecks.

But officials have warned that power and road conditions could rapidly change.