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| You'll never see this again. A view Tuesday in New Orleans, Louisiana. |
The snow was obviously an incredible novelty, but there is of course sad news associated with it. At least 11 deaths have been attributed to the snow and accompanying cold snap.
Us weather geeks are still amazed as snow totals are finalized. If anything, some of them have been revised upward.
The total in the Florida towns of Milton and Jay are now set at 10 inches even, more than double the old record for the biggest snowstorm on record for the entire state.
Grand Coteau, Louisiana reported 13.4 inches, and may have been the snowiest place in the United States Tuesday. It's possible one or two towns near the Great Lakes had more in lake effect snow, but that's uncertain.
Babbie, Alabama reported 11 inches. The eight inches in New Orleans was confirmed as a record, as was the 9 inches in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Mobile, Alabama had a record snowfall of 7.5 inches.
Skies cleared Tuesday night in places along the Gulf Coast from about Mobile westward. Clear skies, relatively light winds and a snow cover almost always cause remarkably low temperatures.
Acadiana, Louisiana reached 2 degrees above zero, for an all-time record low. The town is just 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.
Two locations a little outside of Lafayette got down to 1 below. That was about the same as Burlington, Vermont, which got down to 2 below that morning.
Lafayette itself had an all time record low of 4 above. That was a full 14 degrees colder than the old record for the date and an incredible 40 degrees below the normal low for the dates.
Lake Charles bottomed out at 6 degrees.
Mobile had record low of 6 above. Only the great cold wave of 1899 was worse, as it got to minus one on that occasion.
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| The only way to build a snowman or snow woman in New Orleans. Photo via Fox Weather reporter Brandy Campbell. |
The strength of this cold wave was not the most intense ever along the Gulf Coast. But never before were there several inches of snow on the ground under mostly clear skies during a cold snap near the beaches.
The result was all-time record lows, not even seen back in the day - 1800s to 1930s when they began keeping records in a world that had not experience global warming yet due to our fossil fuel consumption.
It proves that under the right conditions - which happened in this case - you can get incredible frigid spells. Just not as frequently as we once had.
Obviously, road travel was nearly impossible along the Gulf Coast with the snow.
But oddly, at least to me, it was Atlanta that suffered the most chaos from the storm. They didn't get all that much snow, at least compared to cities closer to the coast.
Also, though Atlanta isn't particularly used to or well equipped for winter storms, such weather isn't exactly unheard of there.
The Atlanta area only got an inch or two of snow Tuesday. But it hit in the afternoon. The snow initially melted on many roads then froze into a solid, slick sheet of ice. People were stranded on highways overnight and at least hundreds of cars slid off roads. It was a mess.
The storm that caused all this moved off the southeast coast Tuesday night and began an incredibly fast race across the Atlantic Ocean. It also strengthened mightily to become Storm Eowyn, which is expected to be one of the worst windstorms on record for Ireland and Scotland.
While all this was going on and not to be outdone, while the South was blizzardy, so too, was the more traditional snow belts along near the Great Lakes this week. Over three days ending Wednesday morning, Adams and Barnes Corners, New York each reported 40 inches of new snow.
VIDEOS:
Who knew? Turns out people in New Orleans are really good at building snowmen, despite their lack of experience with winter weather. Check out some examples. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.
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