Atlanta ( CNN ) -- The snow was here , two weeks ago . With just a smattering of white , it wreaked havoc on the South . But it may have been just an opening round . Now , an ice storm is hitting . And matched with snow , it 's the heavyweight of the two . Weather mavens expect up to an inch of ice will give broad swaths of the South a good shellacking . An inch does n't sound impressive ? A foot of snow may look big and bad , but it 's a bunch of fluff compared to a solid inch of ice . Here 's why : . It 's heavier . For starters , ice weighs much , much more . That branch hanging over your roof with a shiny glaze of ice might as well be piled high with nearly three feet of snow . `` Ice increases the weight of branches by about 30 times compared to snow , '' said CNN meteorologist Pedram Javaheri . Got about half an inch of ice on your power lines ? Depending upon distance between the telephone poles holding them , it can add about 500 pounds to a line , Javaheri said . How bad will this get ? And when laden branches crash down on those wires , a lot of lights go out . That 's how more than 500,000 homes lost power in the Storm of 2000 , as it 's known in the South . And it took days to get them back on line . Given that , what 's rolling up on the horizon now does not bode well for the grid . `` When you 're talking about that amount of ice we 're looking at , it 's catastrophic , '' Georgia Power emergency chief Aaron Strickland . `` It 's pricey and messy , '' Javaheri said . `` A 1998 ice storm in northern New England caused over a billion dollars in damage . '' It 's slicker . Ever wonder why we call them `` snow tires '' and not `` ice tires '' ? People in places that get a lot of snow know this : You can drive on it . `` Snow packs down . It 's a little like brittle , it breaks up as you drive on it , '' said National Weather Service meteorologist Kurt Van Speybroeck said . `` If you get even a 10th of an inch of ice on a road , it 's like a skating rink . '' Yes , snow-covered roads kill . But the bigger culprit in any snow storm is ice . As cars travel across the snow , the heat from the tires melts it . When the cold weather refreezes it , the flakes compact into a thin sheet of ice . That 's exactly what happened in Atlanta two weeks ago . It was n't the snow . It was the thin layer of ice that turned a metropolitan area of 6 million into a parking lot . Stir-crazy ? How to stay sane . Worse still is freezing rain , which makes for a motorist 's arch nemesis -- black ice . You think it 's dry road , but it 's not . And by the time you notice , it 's way too late . It 's destructive . Ice on roads also leaves behind scars when it 's gone . It flows into cracks and crevices as water -- on and under street surfaces , for example -- and then it freezes hard like stone . Why not put power lines underground ? In the process , it expands and can break things . Potholes result . Take the ice storm that hit northern Texas in December . It left hundreds of potholes on roads , highways and interstates . Around the same time , auto body shops in northern Texas also talked of seeing repairs surge -- from wheels tally-whacked out of alignment to busted mufflers . It lingers . Icy danger lingers longer , because ice holds on longer than snow , Javaheri said . Ever notice those piles of snow in yards and parking lots that need days more to melt after the rest of the snow is long gone ? Most snow gets dirty after a day or two , which makes it absorb more of the sun 's rays and melt quicker , Javaheri said . Ice is solid and hardly takes in dirt . So it reflects much of the sun 's rays and , as a result , melts more slowly .
Ice adds much more weight to branches and power lines . Comment: `` If you get even a 10th of an inch of ice on a road , it 's like a skating rink , '' an official says . After the ice melts , drivers then must contend with potholes .