ATLANTA — When snow fell on Atlanta two weeks ago, downtown streets of the South’s business hub were jammed with unmoving cars, highway motorists slept overnight in vehicles or abandoned them where they sat, and students were forced to camp out in school gymnasiums when roads turned too treacherous for buses to navigate.

Things promised to be different today, when another round of rain, sleet and freezing rain was expected to begin walloping the area.

That’s not necessarily because city and state officials are going to be better prepared — although they promised they would be — but because many people aren’t going to take a chance that they will get trapped again.

“Basically, everyone from the office is going to be working from home” today, said Dakota Herrera as he left a car park in downtown Atlanta to go to his office Monday.

Atlanta has a long and painful history of being ill-equipped to deal with snowy weather. Despite officials’ promises following a crippling ice storm in 2011 that they would be better prepared next time, the storm that hit the area Jan. 28 proved they still had kinks to work out.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal indicated on Monday that he and other state officials had learned their lesson. Before a single drop of freezing rain or snow fell, Deal declared a state of emergency for nearly a third of the state and state employees were told they could stay home if they felt conditions were too dangerous. Schools canceled classes, and Deal urged people who didn’t need to be anywhere to stay off the roads. Tractor-trailer drivers were handed fliers about the weather and a law requiring chains on tires in certain conditions.

Memories of the last storm are still painfully fresh. Students were trapped on buses or at schools and thousands of cars were abandoned along highways.