A swift-moving storm that dumped as much as 10 inches of snow and slush across the Deep South on Wednesday brought a wintry blast to the Mid-Atlantic on Thursday. Washington, D.C., and its suburbs were hit with 1 to 3 inches of snow before the storm tapered off after 10 a.m., The Weather Channel reported. It will remain too far offshore to bring significant snowfall to New York or hard-hit Boston.
The storm left a trail of travel headaches, school closings and power outages. More than 156,000 homes and businesses in North Carolina were without power Thursday morning, along with 4,000 in Virginia, 13,000 in Alabama and 2,400 in Georgia. In Charlotte, North Carolina, which got about 2 inches of snow, about 500 flights were canceled Thursday — the most in the nation, according to FlightAware.com.
By Thursday night utility crews had knocked the outages in those states down to around 4,000 in Alabama, a little more than 2,300 in Virginia, and crews were working to reduce the outages in North Carolina to under 78,000 — down from a peak of 224,000, utility companies said. By 9 p.m. only around 300 people were still without power in Georgia.
Snow fell across the South from northeast Texas to North Carolina. Northern Alabama got up to 10 inches of snow, while parts of North Carolina, southern Arkansas, and northern Mississippi and Georgia had at least six inches, according to The Weather Channel.
Behind the storm is another blast of cold air — although not as bitter as in the past week. Still, Syracuse, New York, has seen 26 straight days below freezing, and could break a record if the streak continues through Saturday, said NBC News meteorologist Bill Karins. Buffalo, New York, is poised to mark its coldest month since records began in 1874, Karins added. The city's average daily temperature has been 11.2 degrees.
IN-DEPTH
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