A “once in a lifetime” winter storm sweeping through the southern United States on Tuesday dumped snow at levels millions of residents had never seen before.
The storm blanketed New Orleans and Houston with record snow that closed highways, grounded nearly all flights and canceled school for more than a million students more accustomed to hurricane dismissals than snow days.
About 40 million people, from Texas to Florida, were under some type of weather hazard, including more than 21 million under a winter storm warning, forecasters said. Residents of several coastal counties near the Texas-Louisiana border were under their first ever blizzard warning.
Moisture from the Gulf of Mexico was combining with a low-pressure system and chilly air to drop significant amounts of snow in some spots. That included a near-record 10.5in near Lafayette, Louisiana, by Tuesday afternoon.
The National Weather Service said 7 to 8in of snow had been reported in areas between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Parts of New Orleans saw more than 9in (23 cm) of snow by Tuesday evening, breaking its previous record. New Orleans’s old record was 2.7in set in 1963. In Texas, the Houston-Galveston area had 2 to 4in before midday.
“This is a once in a lifetime event for a lot of these folks down there. For kids that have never had snowball fights … they’re going to have one,” said Tom Kines, a meteorologist at AccuWeather.
Ahead of the storm, governors in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, declared states of emergency and many school systems canceled classes on Tuesday.
In Texas, both Houston airports announced flight operations would be suspended starting on Tuesday in expectation of hazardous conditions from the severe winter weather taking aim at a huge swath of the south.
Residents from Texas to north Florida were rushing to insulate pipes, check heating systems and stock up on emergency supplies. In the Florida panhandle, authorities were mobilizing snowplows for the storm.
It appeared Florida had broken its state snowfall record of 4in, set in Milton on 6 March 1954. The National Weather Service’s Mobile office said Pensacola got 5in. Mobile’s airport saw a record-breaking 6.2 inches.
In Georgia, officials said one person had died from hypothermia. Snowfall was expected to stretch from north Georgia, through Atlanta, and into southern portions unaccustomed to such weather.
Meanwhile, cold is blanketing the majority of the continental US thanks to a polar vortex disruption. The Arctic polar vortex is a band of strong winds above the north pole that usually locks in extremely cold air, but right now is stretching south, allowing bone-chilling air to flow down. For example, parts of south central and south-east Texas are expected to see wind chills as low as 10 to 15F into Wednesday, according to an extreme cold warning from the NWS.
Scientists say these stretching events are becoming more frequent and have been linked to the planet-warming emissions that humans are releasing. Studies report human-caused climate change is raising Arctic temperatures at an alarming rate and decreasing the pressure and temperature differences between cold Arctic air and warmer air underneath it, heightening the chance for polar vortex disruptions.
