Major winter storm to disrupt travel and power across South

AccuWeather

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.

Transcript

00:00Not only for the cold, John, but we're talking about a big-time headache as far as a snowstorm.

00:05That's a great description, Melissa. This is going to be a rare and extremely disruptive winter storm

00:11with snow and ice across the far south, parts of the country where snow and ice is very unusual.

00:17There's less equipment to deal with it, as you mentioned earlier, and we're expecting

00:21it's going to be a complete travel shutdown here for a couple of days, it looks like, across the I-10 corridor.

00:27Big problems on I-10, there will be some power outages in some areas, and the extreme cold

00:33that will be associated with the storm will make the cleanup process slow,

00:37so this is going to be a high-impact and major snow and ice storm.

00:41And it all gets going as we go through later today into this evening.

00:45It starts slowly, but it's going to ramp up pretty quickly here.

00:48I think that's a key point, as you can see the moisture gathering here, and now you start seeing

00:53some rain along the Texas coast, that's all in the green shades there,

00:57but the blue is snow and the pink is an icy mix, and as we put that into motion,

01:02watch how that area blossoms, it really grows here through the overnight hours tonight

01:06and into the first part of tomorrow. So tomorrow morning at 5 o'clock Central Time,

01:11it's snow, and it's snowing hard across the Houston area out toward Lake Charles,

01:16and this is going to be a several-hour period of substantial snow from Houston to Beaumont

01:21out toward Lake Charles, and eventually into New Orleans by midday tomorrow.

01:25Road conditions are going to deteriorate rapidly, and again along Interstate 10 in particular,

01:31that snow and sleet-freezing rain will shift to the east and eventually up I-95 in the Carolinas.

01:37So in these areas, we're going to be dealing with major travel impacts.

01:41Here's the icing risk. A couple of areas that we're more concerned about with ice,

01:46especially freezing rain, that's rain that's falling and freezes on cold surfaces

01:50like power lines and also roadways, that would be across south Texas,

01:55especially from San Antonio toward Corpus Christi, and then another area of greater concern

02:01across north Florida from Jacksonville toward Savannah, Georgia,

02:05and that's where there can be an elevated risk for power outages.

02:08But one of the things that our team of 100 expert meteorologists, our snow experts

02:12and our icing experts we're talking about today is that this press of Arctic air is so impressive

02:17that this may in a lot of places end up being sleet and snow, Melissa, versus a freezing rain concern.

02:23Those totals are still very impressive here for the southern U.S.

02:27as we talk about what may not be records in every city,

02:31but certainly challenging a couple of the top snow events here in many cities.

02:35Looks that way. We're talking about a widespread 3 to 6 inches of snow near the Houston area

02:40along I-10 out toward New Orleans here, which is a very significant snow, as we mentioned.

02:4510 is going to be extremely dangerous and difficult travel here.

02:49Remember, in this part of this country, there are many elevated bridge surfaces and elevated roadways,

02:55and that's going to add to the problems here.

02:57There will be a narrow strip of 6 to 10 inches from the northeastern suburbs of Houston out toward Lake Charles,

03:04paralleling I-10, 1 to 3 inches, though, along the Gulf Coast from New Orleans,

03:08further eastbound toward portions of north Florida,

03:11and there can be a little bit higher snow totals across ports of South Carolina and the North Carolina coast as well.

03:17So big-time travel problems on the roads and the airports.

03:20Great time to download the AccuWeather app.

03:22You can use the winter cast feature to see how much snow we're expecting in your backyard,

03:26plus the prospects for a little bit more or a little bit less.

03:29Great planning tool for you to help you to be best prepared and stay safer.

03:33It would be hundreds of miles of Interstate 10 with closures or at least significant trouble.

03:39AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist John Porter, thanks again for joining us this morning.

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