Winter storm spreads across the Deep South, creating icy danger and snowy fun

An ice covered fountain sits in front of a Mardi Gras festooned skeleton the day after a rare and record setting snowstorm in River Ridge, La., a suburb of New Orleans, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A major storm spread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain across the southern United States on Wednesday, breaking snow records and treating the region to unaccustomed perils and wintertime joy.

From Texas through the Deep South, down into Florida and to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, snow and sleet made for accumulating ice in New Orleans, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Florida and other major cities.

At least three deaths were attributed to the cold as dangerous below-freezing temperatures with even colder wind chills settled in. Arctic air also plunged much of the Midwest and the eastern U.S. into a deep freeze, grounding hundreds of flights. Government offices remained closed, as were classrooms for more than a million students more accustomed to hurricane dismissals than snow days.

New Englanders know what to do in weather like this: Terry Fraser of Cape Cod, Massachusetts didn’t have her trusty windshield scraper while visiting her new granddaughter in Brunswick, Georgia, so she used a plastic store discount card to remove the snow and ice from her rental SUV in a frozen hotel parking lot.

“This is what we do up north when you don’t have a scraper,” Fraser said. “Hey, it works.”

Frasier had one additional bit of advice: “Don’t use your credit card, because then you can’t go shopping.”

In Tallahassee, Florida, the Holmes family set their alarms early on Wednesday and found a snow-covered slope before it melted away. Nine-year-old Layla and 12-year-old Rawley used what they had: a boogie board and a skimboard.

“Gotta get creative in Florida!” mom Alicia Holmes said.

Anchorage wants its snow back

The record 10-inch (25-centimeter) snowfall in New Orleans was more than double what Anchorage, Alaska, has received since the beginning of December, the National Weather Service said.

“We’d like our snow back,” the weather service office in Anchorage joked in a post on X on Wednesday. “Or at least some King Cake in return.”

It also was warmer Wednesday morning in Anchorage than in New Orleans, Atlanta, Jacksonville or Charlotte, North Carolina, according to the weather service.

Even the interstate closes

The snow and ice also closed highways — including many miles of the nation’s southernmost interstate, I-10, as it stretches from Florida to Texas. Especially prone to freezing were the elevated roads and bridges that run over Louisiana’s bayous.

“Louisiana, if you can, just hang in there,” Gov. Jeff Landry said, warning that Tuesday’s “magical” snow day would turn dangerous Wednesday as conditions worsened.

Highways were deserted along long stretches in Louisiana and Georgia, where a jackknifed truck closed part of the snowy interchange between Interstate 16 and Interstate 95.

In Charleston, South Carolina, it took crews nearly 16 hours to reopen travel in one direction along the massive 2 1/2 mile (4 kilometer) Ravenel Bridge that carries about 100,000 vehicles a day.

The icy conditions plagued motorists in Georgia, where troopers responded to more than 1,000 calls for help. Hundreds of trucks backed up near a crash on Interstate 75 between Macon and Atlanta. Some motorists slept in their vehicles overnight as even a fire truck got stuck on the ice, DeKalb County authorities said. And police appealed to the owners of dozens of cars abandoned at the bottom of a glazed-over hill in Snellville to retrieve their vehicles as soon as it’s safe.

Who needs a beach when there’s snow

Some people took advantage of the Ravenel bridge’s steep overpasses, turning them into impromptu sled runs. On the Outer Banks, children sledded down snow-covered sand dunes near where the Wright Brothers first took flight, while adults tried to navigate waist-high snow drifts that had piled up on the Kitty Hawk Pier. A ferry system suspended service between the barrier islands.

“It’s maybe once every 10 years that we get a good one like this,” said Ryan Thibodeau, 38, co-owner of Carolina Designs Realty, a vacation rental company.

The storm that prompted the first ever blizzard warnings for some places along the Texas and Louisiana coast also covered the white-sand beaches of normally balmy Gulf Shores, Alabama, and Pensacola Beach, Florida. Snow covering South Carolina sand from Hilton Head Island to the giant Ferris wheel in Myrtle Beach created more opportunities to turn surf gear into sleds.

“It didn’t have the speed of a toboggan,” Alex Spiotta said as his family glided on a boogie board in Isle of Palms, South Carolina. “But in the South, you have to use what you have.”

Others went sledding in a laundry basket in Montgomery, Alabama, and pool-tubing down a Houston hill. A car pulled a skiier down a street in Pensacola, Florida. In Metairie, Louisiana, several nuns enjoyed throwing powdery snow at a priest. In New Orleans, a hockey player skated down Canal Street, while urban skiing was attempted along Bourbon Street and people went sledding down the snow-covered Mississippi River levees on kayaks, cardboard boxes and inflatable alligators.

Flight cancellations, fatalities and sports postponements

Nearly 2,000 U.S. flights were canceled and 2,300 more were delayed by midday Wednesday, according to online tracker FlightAware.com.

Record demands for electricity to stay warm were met by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides power to more than 10 million customers in seven states, and PJM Interconnection, which operates the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid. But more than 100,000 customers were without power across the region Wednesday morning, including about 46,000 in Georgia and 37,000 in Florida, according to the website PowerOutage.us.

Two people died in the cold in Austin, Texas, which said emergency crews responded to more than a dozen “cold exposure” calls. In Georgia, authorities said one person died from hypothermia.

The storm prompted several sports-related postponements Wednesday night, including the NBA game between the Milwaukee Bucks at the New Orleans Pelicans, and the women’s college basketball game between No. 5 LSU at No. 2 South Carolina.

And yet, the planet is getting warmer

In Southern California, where blazes have killed at least 28 people and burned thousands of homes, Santa Ana winds and dry conditions worsened by climate chaange remained a concern.

Even as the United States, which is about 2% of the Earth’s surface, shivers through abnormally cold temperatures, the world as a whole is breaking heat records. So far, 2025 has had the hottest first 20 days of a year on record, according to Europe’s Copernicus climate service, breaking last year’s record, according to data going back to 1940.

So far this year, U.S. weather has set or tied 697 daily records for coldest temperature, not much more than the 629 daily records reported so far this year for warmest temperatures for the date. In the past 365 days, U.S. weather stations have recorded five times as many heat records than cold, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Scientists say they seem to be seeing more frequent cold air outbreaks — but not cooler weather in general — and theorize that a warming Arctic is altering the jet stream and polar vortex to allow cold air to escape and plunge further south.

Payne reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Bynum from Brunswick, Georgia. Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C., and AP writers Sarah Brumfield in Cockeysville, Maryland; Jack Brook in New Orleans; Sara Cline in Key Largo, Florida; John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed.