The southern US got its turn to experience snow, freezing rain and sleet in a storm that brought back memories of one from the same time a year ago.
After weeks of snow in the northeastern US, winter weather had moved through Arkansas and Kentucky and was headed east.
While even small amounts of frozen precipitation can bring the region to a halt, the worst was yet to come: temperatures falling below minus-13?C in areas where electricity was threatened by coatings of ice on power lines.
The storm arrived on Monday, the US Presidents Day holiday, when many schools and businesses were already closed.
However, the day is not a state holiday in North Carolina, so schools let out early on Monday; by the afternoon, officials were canceling classes for yesterday.
College campuses from Appalachian State University in the western part of the state and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill canceled afternoon classes on Monday.
In central Kentucky, home to much of the state’s signature Thoroughbred industry, horses kept warm by galloping through the deep snow, pausing occasionally to shake it off of their thick winter coats.
Ned Toffey, general manager of Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, said the horses enjoy running in the snow because it gives them a nice cushion as opposed to harder packed earth.
Roads were brined and parking lots salted as officials tried to avoid a disastrous repeat of last February’s storm, when rush-hour traffic and a thin coating of ice combined to leave people either stuck in their cars or with their cars abandoned on roads as they walked home in Atlanta, Georgia, and Raleigh, North Carolina.
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory on Monday shut down all non-mandatory state government operations in Wake County in the early afternoon before any precipitation had fallen.
He also declared a state of emergency and issued executive orders designed to streamline any storm cleanup.
He encouraged supervisors elsewhere in the state to use their discretion in sending employees home.
On Monday night, he said that the forecast had worsened, with more snow and ice expected in the central part of the state.
The US National Weather Service said the storm could be crippling.
In the northeast, which has been slammed by seemingly endless snow, the snow had halted, but the weather was bitterly cold.
New York City came close to breaking a 127-year-old record when the temperature in Central Park hit minus-16?C, just above a record set in 1888, weather service meteorologist Jeffrey Tongue said.
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said the latest snow storm left at least one person dead, apparently due to a heart attack while shoveling snow.
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