A major storm spread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain across the southern United States on Wednesday, breaking snow records and treating the region to unaccustomed perils and wintertime joy.
From Texas through the Deep South, down into Florida and to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, snow and sleet made for accumulating ice in major cities such as New Orleans, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Florida. In Alabama, the weight of the snow collapsed the dome of the Mobile Civic Center, which was being demolished to make way for a new entertainment facility.
At least eight deaths were attributed to the storm as dangerous below-freezing temperatures with even colder wind chills settled in. Arctic air also plunged much of the Midwest and the eastern U.S. into a deep freeze, grounding hundreds of flights. Government offices remained closed, as were classrooms for more than a million students more accustomed to hurricane dismissals than snow days.
New Englanders know what to do in weather like this: Terry Fraser of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, didn’t have her trusty windshield scraper while visiting her new granddaughter in Brunswick, Georgia, so she used a plastic store discount card to remove the snow and ice from her rental SUV 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.”