The skies above Atlanta can be fickle. Black clouds that deliver flashes of thunder and lightning in the afternoon can change quickly, clearing by nightfall.

On Tuesday before sunset it was a fluttering swirl of cash — and a lot of it — blowing through the air that brought traffic to a halt and people into the street when a side door of an armored Garda truck suddenly opened on a highway.

About $175,000 in bills spilled out and were carried away by the wind over a section of Interstate 285, which encircles Atlanta, the police said. The bills scattered to the shoulder of the six-lane westbound section of the highway. Some floated across the divider into eastbound lanes. Bills blew into the woods or sank into storm drains.

Image Cash on the shoulder of Interstate 285, which encircles Atlanta, on Tuesday. Credit... Viralhog, via Reuters

More than a dozen commuters screeched to a halt or veered off to the shoulder of the highway near the Dunwoody Road exits, the police said. They scooped up bills from the pavement and returned to their vehicles with fistfuls, and sometimes armloads, of cash.