Worst snowstorm in 130 years plunges US South into frigid chaos

Brian K. Sullivan, Bloomberg News on Jan 22, 2025

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Across the U.S. South, extreme weather usually means boarding up windows against hurricane winds and lining streets with sandbags to hold back floods. This week, freezing temperatures and record-breaking snowfall are instead sending residents from Florida to Texas rushing to warming centers, and causing chaos on roads and runways.

The region’s worst snowstorm in 130 years has seen as much as 10 inches pile up in New Orleans, according to public reports, smashing a record of 2.7 inches set in 1963. Temperatures fell to 26F (minus 3C) overnight. Similar accumulations of snow were recorded in Pensacola, Florida, and more than four inches hit the Houston area.

In New York City, where snowfall is a standard feature of the winter commute, just 5.8 inches have fallen in Central Park since the start of December.

Airports struggled to keep up with the weather, with more than 1,800 flight cancellations as of Wednesday afternoon, and many more delayed. At least 420 flights in and out of Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport were canceled, including 37% of all outbound flights. Temperatures in the city fell to 24F overnight. Southern airports, where extreme cold conditions are rare, tend to lack enough equipment to de-ice planes or keep runways clear when major winter storms do hit.

While less than an inch of snow fell across Georgia, icy roads made for a hazardous drive home on Atlanta’s busy roads, as commuters crashed their cars or got stranded navigating the notoriously hilly streets in the region. Many businesses and schools in the city were closed on Wednesday, and Mayor Andre Dickens urged residents to stay at home as crews worked with limited equipment to clear roads for the second time in two weeks.

In Houston, city water pipes froze then thawed and burst, turning streets into skating rinks, according to a city post on X. Many schools across the fourth most populated city in the U.S. were closed.

And near Pensacola, reports of 10 inches of snowfall would be an all-time high for Florida if verified, said Frank Pereira, a senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center. The unusual weather had meteorologists looking for the last time such a widespread snowstorm hit the Gulf of Mexico.

“This is certainly historic,” Pereira said. “The 1895 blizzard probably produced more, but not since then have a lot of these areas seen a snowfall of this magnitude. It was a once in a generation, if not more, event.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday that the state had dispatched all the salt truck and plows it could muster, but there was only so much officials could do for such a rare winter storm.

“These are conditions we’re not used to in Florida, so there’s going to be a lot of people that have never been in conditions like this,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Tallahassee.

Roads and bridges in the north of the Sunshine state were impassable Wednesday morning, and stretches of Interstate 10 in both Florida and Louisiana were closed. Amtrak canceled train across the regions, including stretches of the City of New Orleans line, immortalized by songwriter Arlo Guthrie in a 1970s hit. The National Basketball Association postponed a Wednesday game between the New Orleans Pelicans and Milwaukee Bucks.

The South has been the focus of winter’s wrath so far this year. The latest weather system comes about two weeks after another snowstorm rolled across the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma and Arkansas before coating Atlanta with ice and finally exiting into the Atlantic off the Carolinas.

In the Texas capital of Austin, Austin-Travis County EMS responded to 35 cold-related illness incidents from midnight on Jan. 19 through 11 a.m. on Jan. 22, which included two fatalities. Austin Water responded to a small number of water main breaks, providing bottled water to affected customers while repairs took place.

The deep freeze is expected to ease by the weekend, as temperatures climb turning snow to slush and eventually mud. Sunday’s forecast calls for a high of 63F with showers in New Orleans and 65F and rain in Houston.

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(With assistance from Brendan Walsh, Julie Fine, Joe Carroll, Michael Smith, Brett Pulley and Mary Schlangenstein.)

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