Winter storm spreads across southern US with ice and snow

NEW ORLEANS— A massive storm of snow, sleet and freezing rain hit the southern United States on Wednesday, setting new records for snowfall and exposing the region to unaccustomed winter joys and dangers.

From Texas and extending south to Florida and the North Carolina coast, snow and sleet caused ice accumulation in cities New Orleans, Atlanta and Jacksonville, Florida. In Alabama, the weight of the snow caused the dome of the Mobile Civic Center to collapse, which is scheduled for demolition to make way for a new arena for sporting events.

At least eight deaths were attributed to the storm as temperatures settled below freezing with even colder wind chills. The arctic air also turned much of the north-central and eastern parts of the country into a freezer, causing hundreds of flights to be cancelled. Government offices remained closed, as did classrooms for more than a million students who are more accustomed to hurricane evacuations than snow days.

New Englanders know what to do on days like these: Terry Fraser of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, didn’t have his windshield snow removal tool with him when he went out to visit his granddaughter in Brunswick, Georgia, so he used the card from a discount store to remove snow and ice from his rental van in a frozen hotel parking lot.

“This is what we do up north when you don’t have a scraper,” Fraser said. “Hey, it works.”

In Tallahassee, Florida, the Holmes family set their alarms for the early hours of Wednesday and headed out in search of a snow-covered slope before it melted. Layla, 9, and Rawley, 12, used what they had: their surfboards.

“You have to be creative in Florida!” said mom, Alicia Holmes.

Anchorage wants its snow backThe record 10 inches (25 centimeters) of snowfall in New Orleans more than doubled the snowfall Anchorage, Alaska, has received since early December, the National Weather Service said.

“We would like our snow back,” the weather service office in Anchorage joked in a post on the social network X. “Or at least some King Cake in return.”

Anchorage was also warmer Wednesday morning than New Orleans, Atlanta, Jacksonville or Charlotte, North Carolina, according to the weather service.

Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are forecast to persist in the southern region of the country on Thursday morning, with widespread frost in some places through the weekend, the weather service said. The thermometer is expected to return above freezing on Thursday in places such as New Orleans, and by Friday in Tallahassee and the coast of the Carolinas.

Interstate highway closures Snow and ice also forced road closures, including a several-mile stretch of Interstate 10. Causeways and bridges crossing the Louisiana marshes were particularly prone to frost.

“Louisiana, if you can, just hang in there,” Gov. Jeff Landry said, warning that Tuesday’s “magical” snow day would turn dangerous Wednesday as conditions worsened.

In Charleston, South Carolina, it took crews nearly 16 hours to reopen traffic along the massive 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) Ravenel Bridge, which carries about 100,000 vehicles a day.

Icy conditions plagued drivers in Georgia, where authorities responded to more than 1,000 calls for help.

Who needs a beach when there’s snow?Some people took advantage of the Ravenel Bridge’s steep overpasses and turned them into makeshift sledding tracks. On the Outer Banks, children slid down snow-covered sand dunes near where the Wright Brothers made their first flight, while adults attempted to navigate waist-deep drifts of snow at Kitty’s Pier. Hawk. One ferry system suspended service between the barrier islands.

“Maybe every 10 years we get a good snowfall like this,” said Ryan Thibodeau, 38, co-owner of Carolina Designs Realty, a vacation rental company.

The storm that triggered the first blizzard warnings for some locations along the Texas and Louisiana coast also blanketed the beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama, and Pensacola Beach, Florida. Snow covering the South Carolina sand from Hilton Head to Myrtle Beach created more opportunities to convert surf gear into sleds.

“It didn’t have the speed of a sled,” Alex Spiotta said as his family rode a boogie board on the Isle of Palms, South Carolina. “But in the south, you have to use whatever you have.”

Other things that were used as sleds were: a laundry basket in Montgomery, Alabama; a pool tube in Houston; and kayaks, cardboard boxes and alligator inflatables on the Mississippi River levees in Louisiana. A vehicle was dragging a skier down a street in Pensacola, Florida. In Metairie, Louisiana, several nuns were having fun throwing snowballs at a priest.

Flight cancellations and fatalitiesNearly 2,000 flights were canceled in the United States and another 2,300 were postponed as of midday Wednesday, according to the website FlightAware.com.

The unprecedented demand for electricity to stay warm was met by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides power to more than 10 million customers in seven states, and PJM Interconnection, which operates the 13-state grid. But more than 100,000 families were without power in the Mid-Atlantic region Wednesday morning, according to the website PowerOutage.us.

The Texas Department of Safety and Security reported that five people were killed early Tuesday when a tractor-trailer crashed into other vehicles on an icy highway southwest of San Antonio. Two people died from the cold in Austin, Texas, where emergency crews responded to more than a dozen reports of “cold exposure.” In Georgia, authorities said one person died of hypothermia.

And yet the planet is warmingIn Southern California, where fires have killed at least 28 people and consumed thousands of homes, Santa Ana winds and arid conditions worsened by climate change continued to raise concerns.

Although the United States, which covers approximately 2% of the planet’s land surface, experiences unusually low temperatures, the planet as a whole sets heat records. So far in 2025, the first 20 hottest days of a year on record have been experienced, according to the European climate service Copernicus, leaving last year’s mark behind, according to the data, which goes back to 1940.

So far this year, U.S. weather has set or tied 697 daily records for low temperatures, compared to the 629 daily records reported so far for warmest temperatures to date. In the last 365 days, weather stations in the United States have recorded five times more warm records than cold ones, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Scientists say there appear to be more frequent outbreaks of cold air, but not overall colder weather, and believe that Arctic warming is altering the jet stream and polar vortex to allow cold air to escape into the regions. south.