‘It’s serious’: Southeast hit by widespread winter storm
A storm bringing havoc to airline and highway traffic across much of the nation crawled east Sunday, pummeling the Southeast with snow and sleet.
More than 400,000 homes and businesses were without power in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama on Sunday. Thousands of flights were canceled or delayed from Texas to the Carolinas.
In North Carolina, more than 1,000 flights were canceled in and out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport alone. Parts of the state could see snow measured in feet rather than inches before the storm rolls out to sea.
“That’s where the weather was expected to be the worst, and it certainly has lived up to the forecast,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Eric Leister told USA TODAY.
In western North Carolina, Saluda, population 700, was buried under 20 inches of snow by midafternoon. Other areas of the state and parts of southern Virginia were dealing with 12 to 18 inches.
Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency before the first flake fell.
“This is a snowstorm, not a snowfall – it’s serious,” Cooper said. “We’re preparing for days of impact, not hours.”
Cooper warned that utility companies projected power outages for more than half a million homes and businesses before the storm passes. More than 250,000 outages were reported Sunday.
State Highway Patrol officers had responded to 500 crashes by late Sunday afternoon, Cooper said.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam also declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm, urging residents to “take all necessary precautions.”
Richmond was paralyzed by several inches of snow and could get 6 inches before it ends Monday. Areas just north of the city could get a few more.
The storm rolled out of Southern California early last week after slamming the region with heavy rains that triggered mudslides on wildfire-scarred hillsides. It continued east, leaving a swath of power outages, delayed and canceled flights and dangerous road conditions in its wake.
In Texas, Lubbock was blasted with more than 10 inches of snow. Hundreds of miles to the southeast, the storm brought more than 6 inches of rain to areas around Houston. College Station, home to Texas A&M University, reported 4 inches of rain, shattering a record set in 1931, the National Weather Service said.
Parts of Tennessee and Kentucky were treated to what Leister described as an “ice event.” Some areas saw a quarter-inch of ice, making roads impassable. The storm rolled into the Carolinas and Virginia as a snowmaker.
“It has been a stubborn, long-lasting storm,” Leister said. “There will be lingering pockets to snow and freezing rain across parts of North Carolina and Virginia tomorrow, but the storm is headed out to the Atlantic.”