Southern States Face a Forecast of Ice and Heavy Snow

A strip of what forecasters are calling “heavy snow and disruptive ice” is expected to pile up across the South through the end of the week. From the southern plains of Texas and Oklahoma to the Carolina coastal plains, much of this winter precipitation is forecast to fall on places where people are less accustomed to winter weather, and it is likely to cause hazardous driving conditions, power outages and school closures.

Source: National Weather Service Notes: Snowfall forecast for . Updated . Results show the nearest location where such data is available. By Aatish Bhatia, Josh Katz and Bea Malsky

In the Southern United States, it doesn’t take huge amounts of snow or ice to disrupt everyday life.
Over a half foot of heavy snow is expected to create dangerous travel conditions along and south of Interstate 40 across Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee.
Farther south, along and just north of Interstate 20 from Texas to Georgia, snow is likely to change to sleet and freezing rain as warmer air noses in above the freezing temperatures at the surface.
The region will continue to see cooler temperatures into next week, prolonging the likelihood of hazardous travel conditions.

Early Thursday morning, the snow was already falling across northern Texas and into Oklahoma as the storm began to take shape in the Gulf of Mexico before an expected shift to the northeast. The heavier snow is likely to remain in northern Texas and into Oklahoma. The most likely snowfall totals in Texas will be between two and four inches, mainly along and north of I-20, in an area that averages less than two inches per season.

Anticipating the potential effects, Dallas schools will be closed on Thursday and Friday. Gov. Greg Abbott used a news conference on Wednesday to warn drivers: “Be careful. Be cautious.”

“We’re not used to driving on ice and snow,” he said to his fellow Texans. “We’re not used to driving in conditions like this.”

As the storm crosses the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday into Friday, any slight change in its path could result in precipitation that differs from the forecast in a given area. A slightly more northern track would shift the heavier snow farther north and lift the line of freezing rain and sleet. A more southern track would do the opposite, bringing the heavier snow deeper into the South and leaving the northern areas dry.

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