Snow and Cold Across the South: Here’s Where Records Fell

Amid an extraordinary storm that delivered a blast of winter to Southern states, Florida appeared to have shattered its state record for the most snow over 24 hours.

Milton, a town in the western panhandle, picked up 8.75 to 10 inches of snow from Tuesday morning to Wednesday morning, more than doubling the previous 24-hour state record of four inches set on March 6, 1954, also in Milton, according to the National Weather Service.

“We rarely get actual measurable snowfall in Florida,” said Michael Mugrage, a meteorologist with the Weather Service office in Mobile, Ala. “Last snowfall was back in 2014, and it was pretty limited.”

Mr. Mugrage said the Weather Service does not have an official weather station that measures snow in Milton. The readings from the recent storm, which Mr. Mugrage called reliable, mainly came from volunteer observers trained by the Weather Service.

The record will not be finalized until a meeting is held with the State Climate Extreme Committee, which evaluates meteorological observations. “It has to go through a full process to be listed as the official record,” Mr. Mugrage said.

There has been a flurry of chatter about records ever since the storm dumped snow in areas of the South that usually don’t see it.

About 20 miles southwest of Milton, the weather station at the Pensacola International Airport measured 7.6 inches in the storm, surpassing its snow event record of three inches set in 1895. This breaks the old state record but not the new one set in Milton.

Just west of Florida, at the Weather Service office in Mobile, Ala, 7.5 inches of snow was recorded, breaking the past event record of six inches in 1895.

“I’m not exactly familiar with what happened in 1895, but I imagine it’s not too dissimilar to what we just had,” Mr. Mugrage said.

In Louisiana, which saw its first-ever blizzard warning, at least one record was shattered in New Orleans. On Tuesday, eight inches was recorded at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, where the Weather Service has monitored an official weather station since 1948. This beats the old record of 2.7 inches recorded on Dec. 31, 1963, but it does not surpass the official 1895 record of 10 inches at Audubon Park.

No matter, on Tuesday, the Big Easy saw its snowiest day in the metro area in over 100 years.

Here’s a look at the locations with the highest storm snowfall totals, compiled from Tuesday morning to Wednesday morning, according to the Weather Prediction Center.

• Alabama: Babbie, 11 inches

• Florida: Milton, 8.75 to 10 inches

• Georgia: Palmyra, 7.8 inches

• Louisiana: Chalmette, 11.5 inches

• Mississippi: Leakesville, four inches

• North Carolina: Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kitty Hawk, nine inches

• South Carolina: Forestbrook, 4.5 inches

• Texas: La Porte, six inches

• Virginia: Norfolk 4.1 inches