A major winter storm began its frigid assault on the East Coast on Wednesday, draping southern states with levels of snow and ice unseen in decades as forecasters warned that parts of the Northeast soon could face blizzard conditions.
As snow fell as far south as Florida, dire predictions and winter storm warnings stretched north to Maine. The National Weather Service said areas between Virginia Beach and Boston could see up to a foot of snow by tonight, with even more possible elsewhere in New England.
The governors of Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina declared states of emergency, schools were closed on Wednesday across the Southeast and more than 2,000 flights were preemptively canceled ahead of today’s expected onslaught.
Many locations in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast are expected to see record-low temperatures on Friday, with highs only reaching the single digits and teens in some places. By Saturday, much of New England could wake up to subzero cold.
Forecasters predicted the storm will turn into a “bomb cyclone,” so-named because it will explosively intensify, bringing potentially heavy snows and gusting winds. Its force also will be responsible for drawing the numbing polar air south in its wake.
Meteorologists issued bleak forecasts on Wednesday about what could make its way across the Northeast Corridor. The National Weather Service extended its blizzard warning into Boston, and said New England could see up to 3 inches of snowfall per hour and warned it would make “travel difficult if not impossible.”
“Confidence in accumulating snowfall has increased for parts of the Northeast as the (center of the storm) is expected to track closer to the coast and intensify rapidly,” the National Weather Service said.
Authorities announced preparations for dangerous conditions, saying they had massive supplies of salt and plows ready to hit the road. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, said he would activate the state’s emergency operations center, while Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, R, pleaded with people to stay off the roads.
The storm already was wreaking havoc on air travel ahead of its arrival in the Northeast, grounding waves of flights. More than 2,000 flights scheduled for today were halted, most of them through Boston and the three New York-area airports. Airlines bracing for the weather issued waivers for travelers heading through essentially the entire East Coast, allowing people to change their flights without fees.
But before the storm made its way to the highly populated Northeast Corridor, crawling up the coastline much like a hurricane, it brought snow to areas not used to seeing such things — places like the Sunshine State. It wasn’t heavy — for a visitor from Chicago, the snowfall would have registered as a light mist — but there it was, snow falling across Tallahassee, Florida’s capital.
Flakes fell from the sky and coated cars, lawns and sidewalks in a city where the weather had topped 70 degrees just last week. The momentous occasion was summed up by the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper, which published a story headlined: “Relive all nine terrifying minutes of the great Tallahassee blizzard of 2018.”
The storm shut down roadways along the Southeast and, in several places, closed schools, giving Floridians used to seeing classes canceled for hurricanes some experience with snow days instead. In Georgia, where some parts of the state saw as much as three inches of snow, Gov. Nathan Deal, R, declared a state of emergency for 28 southeastern counties.