By Rich McKay and Georgina McCartney
ATLANTA (Reuters) – A historic January storm dumped more deep snow along the U.S. Gulf Coast on Wednesday after bringing Houston and New Orleans to a near standstill over the past two days and blanketing parts of the Florida Panhandle with accumulations more typical of Chicago.
An additional 4 inches (10 cm) of snow, combined with sleet and freezing rain, accumulated in some places in northern Florida, southern Georgia and southeastern South Carolina as the storm crawled through the region Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.
Florida may have already broken its all-time snowfall record with 9 inches in the western city of Milton, near Pensacola, according to Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Weather Center.
Before this storm, Milton Mayor Heather Lindsay (NYSE: ) said she hadn’t seen a flake of snow in the city since 2014.
“We’re taking it easy, but everything is closed,” Lindsay said. The city doesn’t have snow plows, and most residents don’t even have a snow shovel, she said.
“But the kids are out using kayaks and tubes as sleds, enjoying the snow day,” she said.
As precipitation dissipated Wednesday, cold air has arrived and will linger through at least this weekend along the Gulf Coast and East Coast.
“The cold is there,” Pereira said.
In Tallahassee, Florida’s capital, where temperatures typically hover around 60 degrees in January, a low of 4 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 degrees Celsius) is expected on Wednesday.
The winter storm has already hit major cities on the Gulf Coast, such as Houston, which received 4 inches (10 cm) of snow, the most the city has received since 1960. In the New Orleans area, a record 10 inches (25 cm) of snow accumulated on some places, turning Bourbon Street white on Tuesday.
SNOW IS RARE IN LOUISIANA
Justin Daffron, chief development officer for Covenant House in New Orleans, said his shelter is operating at full capacity but is managing to keep up with demand even though snowy conditions are almost unheard of in Louisiana.
“I think this is different because hurricanes are common in New Orleans and we’re not used to harsh winter weather,” he said. “Everyone was surprised because for those of us who have already had a winter here, it was basically a dusting.”
The storm killed at least 12 people, including five in Zavala County, Texas, early Tuesday in a crash on Highway 57, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Two other deaths in Texas were reportedly caused by exposure to the cold in Austin, officials said.
Other cold-related deaths were reported in Alabama and Georgia, officials said.
About 20 million people across the region are under winter weather warnings Wednesday, the National Weather Service said, warning people about the dangers of frostbite and hypothermia and road travel.
“These travel impacts could last several days given the historic high accumulations combined with cold temperatures, as well as the lack of road clearing equipment compared to areas further north,” the service said.
More than 90,000 homes and businesses were without power from Texas east to Georgia and Florida, according to Poweroutage.us. Many schools and local government offices were closed, while many highways across the region were slippery, covered in snow and ice.
Airports, including Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, were temporarily closed overnight and early Wednesday due to the storm. More than 1,400 flights were canceled in the US, many in the Southeast, and another 1,200 were delayed, according to the tracking site Flightaware.com.
U.S. liquefied natural gas company Freeport LNG said on Wednesday it shut down its Texas export facility on Jan. 21 due to power problems during the winter storm and will keep it closed until power supplies stabilize.
The US Northeast faced another day of cold temperatures. The lowest temperature recorded in the contiguous United States on Wednesday was a bitter -27 degrees Fahrenheit (-32 C) in Davis, West Virginia, according to the National Weather Service.
