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Report
Major winter storm to disrupt travel and power across South
AccuWeather
Follow
1/20/2025
AccuWeather's Jon Porter warns of extreme cold, snow and ice bringing power outages and travel disruptions to the southern U.S. Up to 235 million people are at risk of extreme conditions.
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00:00
Not only for the cold, John, but we're talking about a big-time headache as far as a snowstorm.
00:05
That's a great description, Melissa. This is going to be a rare and extremely disruptive winter storm
00:11
with snow and ice across the far south, parts of the country where snow and ice is very unusual.
00:17
There's less equipment to deal with it, as you mentioned earlier, and we're expecting
00:21
it's going to be a complete travel shutdown here for a couple of days, it looks like, across the I-10 corridor.
00:27
Big problems on I-10, there will be some power outages in some areas, and the extreme cold
00:33
that will be associated with the storm will make the cleanup process slow,
00:37
so this is going to be a high-impact and major snow and ice storm.
00:41
And it all gets going as we go through later today into this evening.
00:45
It starts slowly, but it's going to ramp up pretty quickly here.
00:48
I think that's a key point, as you can see the moisture gathering here, and now you start seeing
00:53
some rain along the Texas coast, that's all in the green shades there,
00:57
but the blue is snow and the pink is an icy mix, and as we put that into motion,
01:02
watch how that area blossoms, it really grows here through the overnight hours tonight
01:06
and into the first part of tomorrow. So tomorrow morning at 5 o'clock Central Time,
01:11
it's snow, and it's snowing hard across the Houston area out toward Lake Charles,
01:16
and this is going to be a several-hour period of substantial snow from Houston to Beaumont
01:21
out toward Lake Charles, and eventually into New Orleans by midday tomorrow.
01:25
Road conditions are going to deteriorate rapidly, and again along Interstate 10 in particular,
01:31
that snow and sleet-freezing rain will shift to the east and eventually up I-95 in the Carolinas.
01:37
So in these areas, we're going to be dealing with major travel impacts.
01:41
Here's the icing risk. A couple of areas that we're more concerned about with ice,
01:46
especially freezing rain, that's rain that's falling and freezes on cold surfaces
01:50
like power lines and also roadways, that would be across south Texas,
01:55
especially from San Antonio toward Corpus Christi, and then another area of greater concern
02:01
across north Florida from Jacksonville toward Savannah, Georgia,
02:05
and that's where there can be an elevated risk for power outages.
02:08
But one of the things that our team of 100 expert meteorologists, our snow experts
02:12
and our icing experts we're talking about today is that this press of Arctic air is so impressive
02:17
that this may in a lot of places end up being sleet and snow, Melissa, versus a freezing rain concern.
02:23
Those totals are still very impressive here for the southern U.S.
02:27
as we talk about what may not be records in every city,
02:31
but certainly challenging a couple of the top snow events here in many cities.
02:35
Looks that way. We're talking about a widespread 3 to 6 inches of snow near the Houston area
02:40
along I-10 out toward New Orleans here, which is a very significant snow, as we mentioned.
02:45
10 is going to be extremely dangerous and difficult travel here.
02:49
Remember, in this part of this country, there are many elevated bridge surfaces and elevated roadways,
02:55
and that's going to add to the problems here.
02:57
There will be a narrow strip of 6 to 10 inches from the northeastern suburbs of Houston out toward Lake Charles,
03:04
paralleling I-10, 1 to 3 inches, though, along the Gulf Coast from New Orleans,
03:08
further eastbound toward portions of north Florida,
03:11
and there can be a little bit higher snow totals across ports of South Carolina and the North Carolina coast as well.
03:17
So big-time travel problems on the roads and the airports.
03:20
Great time to download the AccuWeather app.
03:22
You can use the winter cast feature to see how much snow we're expecting in your backyard,
03:26
plus the prospects for a little bit more or a little bit less.
03:29
Great planning tool for you to help you to be best prepared and stay safer.
03:33
It would be hundreds of miles of Interstate 10 with closures or at least significant trouble.
03:39
AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist John Porter, thanks again for joining us this morning.
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