Winter storm blanket parts of the South
NASHVILLE — A winter storm blanketed parts of the South with snow, freezing rain and sleet Thursday, tying up roads in Tennessee and Kentucky as the system tracked a path through Appalachia toward the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
Nashville recorded 6.3 inches of snowfall on Thursday, shattering the city’s previous Jan. 6 record of 4 inches that had stood since 1977, the National Weather Service said. Freezing rain and sleet coated areas around the Tennessee-Alabama state border, said Scott Unger, a meteorologist for the service in Nashville.
Authorities urged people to travel only when necessary, as Metro Nashville Police reported accidents and other driving woes that snarled and slowed several roads.
Police in the city reported dozens of wrecks on the road by the early afternoon. A bevy of crashes and other issues bottlenecked drivers on multiple interstates in the region.
Along the Kentucky border, authorities in Montgomery County, Tenn., were dealing with dozens of crashes as well, including a wreck that killed one person involving a commercial vehicle on Interstate 24, according to Tennessee Highway Patrol spokesperson Lt. Bill Miller.
Tennessee Department of Transportation regional spokesperson Rebekah Hammonds tweeted Thursday that the agency is “clearing as much as we can but issues will continue as snow continues to fall and temps drop.”
With temperatures expected to plummet overnight, everything on the ground is going to freeze and create treacherous road conditions Friday, Unger said.
Schools around Tennessee canceled classes and governments temporarily closed their buildings, as far west as Memphis and Shelby County. Gov. Bill Lee shuttered state offices across Tennessee. Nashville and Memphis both saw their share of canceled flights.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear warned that the snow hitting his state was “both real and dangerous,” with hundreds of car crashes across the state. Some areas had already received more than a half-foot by early afternoon, National Weather Service meteorologist Ron Steve said. Beshear declared a state of emergency and said he deployed teams of the Kentucky National Guard to help out.