Several Southern states will be dealing with the lingering effects of a slow-moving winter storm that dumped a half-foot of snow on North Carolina’s largest cities, dusted the Deep South and killed at least 17 people.
While Winter Storm Inga moved offshore late Wednesday, and the snow has now stopped, temperatures in the South will remain below freezing until Friday – when there’s expected to be a major warm-up.
From Charlotte to Raleigh, North Carolina’s five most populous cities all saw significant snow from a system that followed an atypical west-to-east path across the state.
By Wednesday afternoon, Winston-Salem, Greensboro and Durham each had more than six inches, while some places saw as much as 10 inches. Even the beach in Biloxi, Mississippi got a light coating.
An estimated 100,000 homes and businesses in the region are still without power, Weather.com reports.
Drivers unaccustomed to ice spun their wheels across Atlanta, which was brought to a near-standstill by little more than an inch of snow.
Emergency personnel work at the scene of a partially submerged car in a canal in Metairie, Louisiana on Wednesday. Authorities said an eight-month-old baby in the car was killed
Deep ruts are seen in an unplowed street in the Durham County, North Carolina on Thursday
City of New Bern Public Works staff clear streets of ice and snow in downtown New Bern, North Carolina on Thursday
Oranges are encrusted in ice as citrus growers protect their trees from the sub freezing temperatures by spraying water on them on Thursday
Even the best drivers had trouble: Retired NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted that he had just used his winch to help pull a car out of a ditch when he drove off the road and into a tree in North Carolina.
‘NC stay off the roads today/tonight. 5 minutes after helping these folks I center punched a pine tree,’ he reported. A spokesman said Earnhardt was not hurt and his pickup had only minor damage.
Though skies were sunny and bright in many places, temperatures remained below freezing throughout the day in much of the South.
Thousands of schoolchildren and teachers got the day off. Many cities canceled meetings and court proceedings, and some businesses closed. Slippery runways and the need to de-ice planes forced cancellations and delays in New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Electricity usage surged as people struggled to keep warm.
Temperatures are expected to start warming up on Friday throughout the region
The warming trend will continue next week, when temperatures in some parts of the country will be much warmer than usual for the end of January
Meanwhile, the West Coast is expected to get a heavy hit of rain as the week closes out
In Alabama, where some places got at least three inches of snow, dairy farmer Will Gilmer bundled up for the drive to his milking barn before daybreak in rural Lamar County, the thermometer reading seven degrees.
‘I probably had four layers on and then insulated coveralls and a heavy coat on over that. I made it OK except for my toes,’ he said.
The mercury dropped to record lows overnight in several places in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. It was 21 degrees before dawn in New Orleans, breaking the city’s record of 23, set on the same date in 1977.
At least four people died in Louisiana, including a man knocked off an elevated portion of Interstate 10 in New Orleans when a pickup spun out on ice, and an eight-month-old baby, identified Thursday as Kollage Le-Silva, who was pulled unconscious with his mother from their car after it slid off an icy overpass and landed in a canal in suburban New Orleans. The baby’s mother was in critical condition. Wakefield Fire Chief Russell Achord, 48, died in a fatal car crash Wednesday morning, while 84-year-old Paul Maker was died overnight Wednesday from hypothermia in New Roads.
Even NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. struggled on the icy roads Wednesday. After helping a driver ran off the road, he scratched his truck on a pine tree ‘driving too fast in the snow’
Earnhardt Jr. (pictured in November) got caught in the bad weather in North Carolina
Two others died along an icy stretch of I-75 southeast of Atlanta. One was inside their car and another standing beside it on the shoulder when another driver lost control and hit them, killing both, authorities said. In Coweta County, Georgia, a salt truck driver died in a collision with a train.
A young college student died on icy I-64, hitting a tractor-trailer in West Virginia.
On Thursday, a six-year-old boy in Martinsville, Virginia died when his sled slid underneath a vehicle.
Most of the deaths were in traffic accidents, but others died quietly, after authorities said they likely succumbed to exposure to temperatures as low as 10 degrees (minus 12 Celsius).
The body of one woman was found in the snow near City Hall in Memphis, Tennessee. In Crosby, Texas, an 83-year-old woman with dementia was found dead near her home after apparently wandering away. In Houston, two homeless men were found dead after sleeping in the freezing conditions. Another woman was found dead at a bus stop in Dallas, her wheelchair nearby. According to authorities, none showed signs of foul play. And in Austin, a man in his 40s died after plunging more than 30 feet off a frozen overpass on Tuesday.
Snow fell in a wide band that stretched from southeastern Texas all the way to western Massachusetts. And along the Gulf Coast, ice pellets covered the tops of sago palm trees, and stretches of I-10 were closed in Louisiana and across Alabama’s Mobile Bay.
Downtown Atlanta – the corporate capital of the South, notorious for its heavy traffic – was eerily quiet.
Susan Luciano, walking in snow-blanketed Peachtree City just south of Atlanta, was delighted: ‘It is the most romantic setting. It is beautiful. This is God’s masterpiece … a living postcard.’
A tent sits in the snow on a bridge frequented by the homeless as the Atlanta skyline stands in the background on Thursday
Patti Gillespie, Kenneth Cameron and dog Tyler walk along a snow covered Pollock Street in New Bern, North Carolina on Thursday
Traffic moves across the Alfred A. Cunningham Bridge in New Bern, North Carolina on Thursday
Rickey Ranger, with the Craven County Maintenance Department, works to clear snow at Craven County administrative buildings on Broad Street in New Bern, North Carolina on Thursday
Still, dozens of accidents were reported across the Atlanta metro area, one involving a salt truck.
Southern states and cities don’t have the large fleets of snowplows, salting trucks and other snow-removal equipment common in the North.
‘Y’all aren’t going to make it!’ a driver in a pickup truck yelled at two drivers in compact cars that were spinning their wheels on an icy boulevard near SunTrust Park, where the Atlanta Braves play. ‘You’re going to slide back down the hill! Turn around!’
Adrian Benton, a 26-year-old native of snowy Buffalo, New York, tried to help.
‘The up-north way of dealing with snow needs to come down here,’ Burton said of snowplows and salting up North.
In this Wednesday photo, icy patterns are seen along Slippery Rock Creek across from the “Old Mill” at McConnells Mill State Park in Slippery Rock Township, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania
In this Wednesday photo, the “Old Mill,” is seen at McConnells Mill State Park, in a scenic snow setting, in Slippery Rock Township, Lawrence County, Pennsylvaina
Above, another view of ice patterns along Slippery Rock Creek on Wednesday
Dominic Tamerlano, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, walks down a street on Thursday in the still freezing conditions
Scott Blackburn, of Charlotte, North Carolina, swims laps as steam rises from the pool at the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on Thursday
Yet one weather expert who grew up in brutal Michigan winters and now lives in Atlanta said Southern winters have the North beat.
Ryan Maue, a meteorologist with the private forecaster Weather.US, said Atlanta’s mostly untreated roads were fraught with icy peril during his car outing Wednesday to the supermarket.
‘My little car was struggling even to move,’ he said, adding he worried just as much about Southern motorists risking their necks – and those of others in their ‘non-winterized cars.’ But he told The Associated Press that Southern comfort is on the way, with the mercury to start rising above freezing by midday Thursday in the region and even into the low 60s in spots by the weekend.
Said Maue: ‘We should feel a widespread warming throughout the South. It will feel wonderful.’
