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.
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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.