MOBILE, Ala. — Brutally cold temperatures are allowing an incredibly unusual storm to unfold along the Gulf Coast.
Snow, and an icy mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain, expanded in the early hours of Tuesday and ramped up throughout the morning.
The sweeping system is “a generational winter storm event,” the National Weather Servicesaid Monday — and urged those along its path to take it seriously.
Roads overnight and Tuesday will be “extremely hazardous if not impossible for much of the area, and travel is highly discouraged,” the service said. Hundreds of flights in the region already have been cancelled. And schools are closed in states including Texas, Louisiana and Georgia.
The complex mess of wintry weather spread east to reach more of Mississippi and into Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and the western Florida Panhandle throughout the day.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp warned people in the state to stay off roads because the sudden onset of snow later in the day, in places like Atlanta, could catch people off guard.
“This could deteriorate very quickly like it did in 2014,” Gov. Kemp said. A few inches of snow that yearparalyzed Atlanta with countless traffic incidentsthat trapped drivers in what became known as “Snowmageddon.”
Tuesday’s snowfall could break records last set decades ago and possibly rival records from the late 1800s.
Snow even covered sandy beaches along Texas’ coast Tuesday morning.
The rare winter storm comes as more than 220 million people in the US are affected by bitterly cold air. The Upper Midwest and Northern Plains recorded wind chills to 50 degrees below zero Monday and were experiencing 40 degrees below zero Tuesday morning — temperatures that can cause frostbite on exposed skin in a matter of minutes.
Air and road travel halted; schools shut down
Officials in affected states in the South cautioned people to stay off the roads, keep faucets dripping to prevent pipes from freezing, check batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and refrain from using cooking stoves to heat homes.
Governors in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi have declared states of emergency, while Texas authorities have directed state agencies to mobilize resources for the rare snowfall.
“Most of us haven’t experienced this combination of bitter cold and significant snow ever in our lifetime,” Louisiana climatologist Jay Grymes said Monday.
Travel was paralyzed along the Interstate 10 corridor with portions already receiving widespread snowfall totals of 3 to 6 inches. More than half a foot of snow had fallen by Tuesday afternoon along a portion of I-10 in southwestern Louisiana. One location just north of Rayne, Louisiana, recorded 10.5 inches of snow before noon. Cold weather will lock any snow and ice that falls into place, keeping roads hazardous.
Similar warnings were echoed in neighboring Florida. “Our infrastructure is designed differently than states that are used to this (winter weather),” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned in a Tuesday news conference. “The state has done a lot to prepare but … driving in icy conditions, it can be very, very hazardous.”
Disruptions were also reported in the skies.
There were more than 2,000 flight cancellations within, into or out of the US Tuesday morning, with most of those flights coming from Texas and Louisiana, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Nearly all flights to or from New Orleans International Airport were cancelled by 10 a.m. CST.
Louisiana’s Lafayette Regional Airport was closed Tuesdaydue to ice and snow on runways, the airport said. Tallahassee International Airport said it would suspend all operations at 4 p.m. CT with plans to reopen Wednesday at noon.
Houston’s two major airports, George Bush Intercontinental and Hobby, are also closed Tuesday, while Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest, is pretreated roadways and airfield surfaces in preparation for the winter weather, according to spokesperson Andrew Gobeil.
Schools across the Deep South were closed or moved online Tuesday from Texas to Florida. In Georgia, Gwinnett County Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, has moved all its classes online. The Houston Independent School District, the largest in the Lonestar state and the eighth largest in the country, will also be closed until Wednesday.
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