Schools shutter as rare Southern storm threatens areas where snow hasn’t been seen in decade

Schools close as South braces for rare snow storm

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Threats of snow shuttered schools across the South on Friday as residents from Louisiana to coastal South Carolina braced for a rare white landscape that could stretch into areas that haven’t seen snow in a decade — or longer.

Winter storm warnings spanned the Gulf Coast states early Friday as the snow crawled east out of Texas, where it left Dallas with 9 inches of snow, nearly 200 traffic accidents and hundreds of canceled flights. Snow, ice and sleet closed parts of Interstate-49 in central Louisiana early Friday.

Predictions of an inch of snow was enough to close schools in the Florida Panhandle, while classes also were canceled in parts of Alabama, where up to 5 inches of snow could fall.

Several oceanside communities in South Carolina including Charleston — which hasn’t seen recorded snowfall since January 2000 — could see between 2 and 4 inches of snow, said Jonathan Lamb, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Charleston.

And as much as 3 inches could hit Savannah, Ga., where snow was last traced in February 1996 — “and that was only 0.2 inches,” Lamb said. It’s been two decades since Georgia’s oldest city had any notable accumulation, with 3.6 inches falling in December 1989. Normally, temperatures in February don’t dip below 41 degrees.

“There’s no doubt this is a significant event for us,” Lamb said.

Highway patrol troopers in Texas, Alabama and several other states warned of treacherous morning commutes. Dallas police responded to 41 major traffic accidents and 132 minor ones Thursday, though no serious injuries were reported.

Nearly 1,100 flights were canceled systemwide by Fort Worth, Texas-based American Airlines and American Eagle airlines Thursday — about 30 percent of American’s daily flight schedule, said American spokesman Steve Schlachter. Of those, 305 were flights from Dallas-Fort Worth.

The snowfall made this the snowiest winter in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 32 seasons.