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ATLANTA â€" Stretches of the Deep South prepared to sputter slowly toward normalcy on Thursday, two days after a winter storm crippled vast stretches of the region and created unprecedented gridlock in its most populated areas.
After another frigid night that kept roadways slick, forecasters expected that temperatures would rise above freezing on Thursday, and a civil emergency for metropolitan Atlanta was set to expire at noon.
The authorities in Alabama and Georgia said no public school students stayed at their schools on Wednesday night; the night before, thousands slept on towels, gym mats and blankets after dinners of cafeteria food.
Georgia officials also announced plans to reunite drivers in the Atlanta area with the vehicles they abandoned during a Tuesday rush hour that provoked comparisons to a zombie movie and led to packed motels along the highways.
As they sought to coordinate recovery operations, public officials again pushed back against the mounting and fiercely negative reviews of their management of the storm.
In a Thursday morning interview on the “Today Show†on NBC after a segment that showed clogged highways, Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta once more sought to redirect criticism of his administration.
“Within 24 hours, the roads in the City of Atlanta were more than 80 percent passable,†Mr. Reed said. “So I just reviewed your report and it focused almost exclusively on our city’s highways, which the city does not have jurisdiction for, and most of those simply were not in the City of Atlanta.â€
But Mr. Reed conceded what many here believe was a fundamental misstep: the sudden wave of decisions on Tuesday to close schools and shut down area governments.
“We made an error in the way that we released our citizens,†Mr. Reed said.
Georgia officials said that the National Guard would help drivers find their stranded cars. The state asked drivers to report to two staging areas in Atlanta â€" a church and a mass transit station â€" to meet emergency responders who would help them.
“Once there, drivers will be transported to their vehicles by official personnel in a four-wheel-drive,†an official announcement said. “Fuel is available for vehicles that ran out of gas, as well as the capacity to jump a dead battery.â€
In Alabama, where officials reported that the weather had been a factor in at least five deaths, the authorities did not immediately announce formal plans for drivers to retrieve their vehicles, but they said they were working to move cars out of travel lanes.
Even as they prepared for some of the region’s residents to emerge from their homes, hotel rooms and other shelters, officials asked that people remain off the streets as much as possible.
Dozens of Southern school districts remained closed. There were exceptions, though, and the University of Georgia, east of Atlanta, said it would resume classes late on Thursday morning.
Arrangements for air travel remained difficult. The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, was open, but by 6 a.m., airlines had canceled 400 flights. The Southern freeze has led to 5,400 cancellations since Tuesday, with flight schedules that moved planes to or from Atlanta taking the hardest hit.
People who missed flights slept at the airport, where security line waits were as long as 90 minutes at times.
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