‘Historic storm’ delivers biggest snowfall in decades for North Carolina
The storm’s reach also extended as far south as Florida.
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DURHAM, N.C. — Across much of this state, Sunday brought wintry scenes to communities not accustomed to such a hearty snowfall, the result of a powerful nor’easter that had intensified into a bomb cyclone off the state’s shores before bringing what the National Weather Service called a “historic storm” to the region.
Snow had fallen in all 100 counties of the state, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) said, blanketing large metropolitan areas and swaths of rural farmland, coating the mountains in the west, and covering beach towns to the east, hundreds of miles away.
Even amid the dangers of treacherous roads and biting cold, the vast snowfall brought with it scenes of winter joy. In Charlotte, where nearly a foot of snow blanketed the metro area, an SUV meandered through one neighborhood pulling a snowboarder who weaved through the fresh powder. A snowman stood smiling on Wrightsville Beach on Sunday morning, only steps from the ocean surf.
On campus at Duke University in Durham, groups of students posed for selfies on the snow-covered campus and hurled themselves down a nearby hill on makeshift sleds, including at least one inflatable mattress. In one Fayetteville neighborhood, as in many others, a resident wandered outside to fill bowls of powder to make snow cream — a concoction that includes snow, milk, sugar and vanilla flavoring.
From Sylva to Swansboro, from Concord to Calabash, from Bryson City to Beaufort, a sea of dogs in sweaters and puffer jackets frolicked in the white stuff, their enthusiasm surpassed only by the children bundled against the cold and squealing as they sledded.
“We had the kind of snowstorm that we don’t get very often in North Carolina,” Stein said in a video posted Sunday.
He once again implored people around the state to stay off roads as much as possible, saying the state had 2,500 people “out working overtime” to clear as much snow as possible.
“Our fear is that with temperatures staying below freezing today and much of tomorrow, many roads will be bad in many places across the state for days to come,” Stein said. “We have a lot of miles of road in North Carolina, so it’s going to take some time.”
Despite the scenes of skiing and sledding and other winter fun that filled social media feeds on Sunday, there was a realization around the state that, indeed, returning to normal would take time. That has been true in swaths of the East still recovering from a widespread and treacherous ice storm that only a week earlier had steamrolled through much of the South and up the East Coast, killing at least 72 people across several states and leaving at times hundreds of thousands without power.
Now, a new wintry delivery had driven school cancellations and local government closings in North Carolina that were already stacking up by Sunday afternoon, with more expected to come. The road conditions led not only to one harrowing 100-car pileup along Interstate 85, but also to reports of smaller collisions and hazardous conditions in many parts of the state.
“This is no joke,” Stein said. “For your own safety and for the safety of the people clearing the roads, please stay at home if you possibly can.”
As expected, the Outer Banks experienced some of the most dramatic impacts from the weekend storm.
On Sunday afternoon, parts of Highway 12 — the main artery through the Outer Banks — remained closed because of standing water, ice and overwash from flooding. Photos posted by the North Carolina Department of Transportation showed where the ocean had breached dunes, leaving the highway barely recognizable in spots and covered in sand and saltwater.
“Freezing temperatures are keeping roads icy and travel extremely dangerous,” Dare County said in an online post. “Residents and visitors are urged to stay home and avoid driving unless absolutely necessary.”
Meanwhile, the rough conditions caused yet another home to collapse overnight in Buxton, a small town along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore where more than a dozen homes have surrendered to the sea in recent months.
A spokesman for the National Park Service said the house at 46201 Tower Circle Rd. was unoccupied when it collapsed in the early morning hours.
A local resident filmed the moment that the home, with snow falling on its roof and churning waves crashing into its foundation of pilings, finally gave way.
“Another house taken by the graveyard of the Atlantic,” he said as the roiling waves pulled it apart at the seams.
Photos and videos from later in the day showed lumber, shingles and other debris covering the beach. Nearby, other houses stood in the surf, dusted with snow and looking precarious as the latest storm slowly subsided.
At a weather station on Hatteras Island, visibility was reduced to a half-mile around 8 a.m. Sunday as winds gusted to 45 mph, while waves off Cape Hatteras reached up to 20 feet.
The city of Kinston also saw visibility drop below a quarter-mile for four consecutive hours Saturday — and down to an eighth of a mile around 6 p.m.
North Carolina-based weather documentarian Mark Sudduth, who was riding out the storm in Kitty Hawk, said that while he had been there for a few hurricanes, this storm was “next level wow,” sharing a video of whiteout conditions.
The storm’s reach had also extended south toward Florida, with rare Gulf of Mexico-effect snow affecting Central Florida beginning late Saturday. There were reports of flurries near Tampa. One person shared a video of flakes falling in St. Petersburg. Temperatures were in the upper 30s at the time. Snow was spotted as far south as North Port, in Sarasota County.
There were also several reports of downed trees and power lines on Saturday across the Southeast as well as a carport collapse at a mobile home in Sumter, Florida. As of Sunday afternoon, more than 12,000 customers lacked power in the state.
The state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission issued an executive order allowing residents to bring cold-stunned invasive green iguanas to the offices to be “to be humanely killed or, in some cases, transferred to permittees for live animal sales.”
Early Sunday, it was still snowing across eastern parts of the Carolinas, but the storm was rapidly racing away into the open waters of the Atlantic. It was also lightly snowing in parts of eastern Massachusetts, including Boston, although the northwestern side of the storm was passing about 30 to 40 miles offshore of a blustery Cape Cod — defying earlier forecasts of more snow there.
For the areas hit by another bout of snow, the freezing conditions lasting for days after the storm mean any melting will be slow. That will delay the recovery and allow snow and ice to linger for much of the week ahead.
Another surge of arctic air is expected to reach the East Coast late in the week into the weekend. Looking ahead, there are some signs that temperatures will gradually moderate during the week of Feb. 9.
