Snow, ice could target South from Texas to Florida next week

HOUSTON – A winter storm that is expected to begin over Texas and work its way eastward is forecast to produce potentially record amounts of ice and snow for some communities that do not often see frozen precipitation.

Winter weather alerts have been issued from East Texas through southern Mississippi, where the worst of the weather is expected to occur over the next 72 hours.

A Winter Storm Watch is expected to go into effect on Monday evening for cities such as Houston and New Orleans.

The National Weather Service office in Houston warned of snow and sleet totals of up to 3 inches with the potential for locally higher  amounts, starting late Monday and lasting into Tuesday.

The first piece of this weather jigsaw puzzle is a guarantee. A slug of polar vortex-fueled arctic air will spill into the U.S. this weekend, bringing sub-freezing temperatures deep into the South. With that comes a wild swing in temperatures. For example, the highs on Saturday in Houston are forecast to be in the 60s. By Sunday, temperatures will struggle to reach the middle 40s. Temperatures by Monday morning will be in the 20s.

In response to winter weather, New Orleans Public Schools announced it will be closed on Tuesday and the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade annually held in Jacksonville, Florida, on Monday has been postponed.

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The moisture part of the storm begins to take shape Monday with precipitation spreading across the southern half of Texas. By early Tuesday morning, wintry precipitation could be falling in a swath from Del Rio east to Houston. 

The winter weather rapidly moves east, with places such as New Orleans in Louisiana and Pensacola in Florida getting snow, sleet and freezing rain by Tuesday night.

If the storm system drops measurable snow in both the Big Easy and Tallahassee, it would be the first event to do so since February 1973.

HOW OFTEN DO CITIES SUCH AS HOUSTON, NEW ORLEANS, JACKSONVILLE AND SAVANNAH SEE SNOWFALL?

An ice storm could develop across northern Florida and Georgia, with snow stretching as far north as Virginia before the storm exits the region by Wednesday afternoon.

HOW MUCH ICE IS NEEDED TO KNOCK OUT POWER, DAMAGE TREES?

Uncertainty remains

The biggest question with any winter weather event in this part of the country is where the storm is located and when it reaches the cold air. That remains to be seen. Any shift in the track of the low will have a big impact on how the storm eventually plays out.

It was just last week that the Southeast was smacked by a winter storm that left behind several inches of snow.

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Lone Star State preparing

The news of cold paired with winter weather has some in Texas thinking back to the Great Texas Freeze of 2021. More than 200 people died during the storm and subsequent arctic blast. An investigation found that power plants were not properly winterized, which led to dayslong blackouts in parts of the state.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the power grid in the state, issued a Weather Watch from Jan. 20-23 because of the winter weather and the expected increase in electrical demand.

“Grid conditions are expected to be normal during an ERCOT Weather Watch,” the agency said Friday.

CenterPoint Energy, which provides power to much of southeastern Texas, including the Houston metro, said it has activated its cold-weather readiness plan ahead of the expected winter weather. Oncor, the energy provider for the Dallas area, said it is also prepared for outages during the extreme cold if they occur.

Houston officials said warming centers will open Sunday evening.

Winter weather alerts have been issued from East Texas through southern Mississippi, where the worst of the weather is expected to occur over the next 72 hours.