Dangerous travel conditions and power disruptions in South

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Jon Porter urges people in the South to practice extreme caution if you have to travel, stay off the highways if you don't have to. A winter storm will bring snow, ice and extreme cold.

Transcript

00:00John, you talked about this a couple of days ago. Let's go back to the hurricane season.

00:05It was an unprecedented hurricane season across the Gulf Coast states, where we had five

00:12hurricane hits, beginning with Beryl in early July and then ending with Helene and Milton.

00:20And these are some of the same areas that got hit by hurricanes. We're now dealing with this,

00:26the snowstorm. Right, and a very unusual and rare snowstorm. And so yet again, more serious

00:33weather impacts across the Gulf Coast line here, places, communities that had lots of damage from

00:39all these storms. Milton, Helene, Debbie, Francine, Beryl, the list goes on and on.

00:44Now the same areas facing an unusual snow and ice storm. What a year it's been.

00:50All right, we've been talking about this for the last couple of days, John. Interstate 10

00:56is just going to be a mess. I mean, the message we've been telling people all day is to stay off

01:01Interstate 10. It's not where you want to be. And if you have flexible travel plans and you

01:05can adjust those plans, today is the time to do it, because we're concerned. Obviously,

01:09there have already been road closures along 10. There's extremely heavy snow occurring across

01:15parts of Louisiana, where that snow is falling one to two inches per hour. And in northern parts

01:21of the United States, that's too much for even the most experienced road crews to keep up with,

01:26never mind here across Louisiana, where there are few snow plows and salters and things of that

01:31nature. So we're concerned that there can be stretches of 100 or more miles of 10 closed here

01:38for several hours on end. A big problem here and major expansive delays and closures likely here

01:45as the problems continue to shift to the east. What's been so impressive, oftentimes with these

01:50storms, there's ice. There's been virtually no ice with this storm. The cold air is so deep

01:56across a large section of Texas and Louisiana. It is now snowing across the far southern parishes

02:03of Louisiana. There's been a little ice. Now, you and I last week was in the city of New Orleans,

02:10right? We were. Where it was cold, but it is just absolutely thumping snow from New Orleans

02:15toward Lafayette and toward Baton Rouge. John, we already have a report north of Lafayette of 10.2

02:22inches of snow on the ground. What a storm. This is going to be, as we've been talking about,

02:26it's such a rare, this will be a historic storm that people are going to remember for generations.

02:32Think about this in terms of living in New Orleans. You could live in New Orleans your

02:36entire life or Lake Charles or other parts of southern Louisiana and never see this amount

02:42of snow. So that's such an unusual event and it's all being driven by just how impressive

02:49this cold air is, this bitter cold feeding into the system with plenty of moisture from the Gulf.

02:54That's a recipe for big problems. And Bernie, you were mentioning, you and I were at the, along with

02:57other members of the AccuWeather team, at the American Meteorological Society conference last

03:01week in New Orleans. And one of the things we were talking about is the number of elevated

03:06roadways there. And that is just going to add more problems. Lots of elevated roadways along

03:11waterways here along the Gulf Coast. That's just adding more problems because those are going to

03:15be especially slippery. Snowing across the Florida panhandle this afternoon. City like Jacksonville,

03:20rain goes over to a period of snow. Tough forecast along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia,

03:26where it may be a lot of rain that goes over to freezing rain and sleet. Nonetheless, John,

03:32look at our snowfall map. There it is as we head into Wednesday morning.

03:37Heaviest totals along that I-10 corridor, especially in Louisiana. But we're going to be

03:40concerned with the risk for several inches of snow across the Florida panhandle, even places like

03:46Destin, Florida. And then, of course, as we talked about, as the storm turns up the coast here a bit,

03:51we are going to, the character of the storm changes a bit more. There can be some more

03:54sleet and freezing rain mixed in, but still think there are going to be

03:57significant accumulations for those areas. It's over in Houston. It's over in San Antonio.

04:03But the heavy snow continues to fall along Interstate 10 in Louisiana, where we're looking

04:08at over six inches of snow. AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter.

04:12John, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Ahead.

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