Classes and offices on Mercer's Macon campus will be closed Wednesday in response to forecast icy roads, according to a press release emailed on Wednesday morning. It is the second week this semester that winter weather has disrupted class schedules, and the second day in a row this week that classes have been cancelled due to the snow that fell Tuesday afternoon.
As temperatures hovered around 32 degrees Fahrenheit Tuesday, students wandered around campus reveling in the nearly two inches of snow that it received. Many congregated on the field in Five Star Stadium, sliding down its grass berms in makeshift sleds, or took photos with a snow-capped Jesse Mercer in the Historic Quad.
Temperatures reaching below 20 F overnight kept the snow on the ground overnight and into this morning, potentially creating dangerous patches of ice on sidewalks and roads. However, by Friday, Laura Belanger, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said, temperatures should be in the 50's.
Belanger said on Tuesday that the agency's most recent forecast called for about three inches of snow in central Macon-Bibb County, and up to five inches of snow in southern parts of the county.
Gov. Brian Kemp has issued his second state of emergency in two weeks in response to the winter weather that is supposed to hit much of southern and central Georgia. The cancellations come just 12 days after Mercer closed its campuses in anticipation of a winter weather storm that pelted Atlanta but left Macon mostly untouched.
In a press release, Mercer announced that the Mercer Culinary Group would keep the Fresh Food Company open during normally scheduled hours. The release did not specify when other on-campus food options would reopen.
Gabriel Kopp '26 is majoring in Journalism and Law and Public Policy at Mercer University. He has written for The Cluster since he started at Mercer, and currently works as co-Editor-in-Chief. When he isn't studying, he enjoys going for runs and reading The New York Times or the AJC while sipping coffee.
