Residents of the Gulf Coast in upper Texas and parts of Louisiana woke up this morning to an unprecedented blizzard warning – making travel extremely hazardous, or even impossible.
Airports in the Houston area are closed, and a large swath of the southeastern coast of the United States has snow or ice on the ground. This weather pattern could continue for days.
Matt Lanza, a meteorologist and editor at Space City Weather, says some snow could melt today, but is likely to refreeze overnight. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Well, you’re right in the thick of this winter storm there in Houston. What are conditions like where you are?
Matt Lanza: Yeah, it is straight up snowing. I grew up in the northeast, so this is very familiar to me. We’ve got about 3.5 inches of snow. So this is a pretty healthy storm for our area.
Anywhere around the Houston area is seeing anywhere from about one to three inches, maybe four inches in a few spots. The Beaumont area is seeing as much as, I think, 5.5 inches and wider. So it’s piling up out there.
What are the chances that some weather records could be broken in any part of Texas due to this storm?
The big storm was in 1895, and that’s kind of the benchmark storm for this area, where as much as 20 inches of snow fell in Houston – which is almost impossible to believe, but it did actually happen. But in terms of modern records, this will be right up there with some of the bigger ones that we’ve had.
I think probably most notably was the Christmas Eve 2004 storm that brought a lot of snow to coastal South Texas that year. And this one is maybe not as much snow as that in spots, but I think over a broader area it’s occurred. So definitely a wide-ranging storm.
What does it mean that there are blizzard warnings along parts of the Texas coast? Has that ever happened before?
That has never happened on the Gulf Coast, period. That is pretty remarkable, actually.
And, I mean, it’s valid. It’s not like the National Weather Service is just issuing that because it’s such a rare event for us. But for blizzard criteria to be met, you have to have frequent wind gusts up above 35 miles an hour, reducing visibility to a quarter mile or less. And that’s pretty much what’s going to happen in some of those areas with the heavy snow and the combination of that and the winds.
So a legitimate blizzard-condition type set up is very possible for those areas.
» RELATED: Beaumont, Southeast Texas see first-ever blizzard warning
Where is the heaviest snow falling?
The heaviest snow will be exiting Houston this morning and moving into the Beaumont area and into southwest Louisiana as we go into the late morning and early afternoon. And then it will keep marching on down toward New Orleans and out of the way.
So the worst of the storm will be over with soon, if it’s not already for most of the Houston area. And gradual improvement will from northwest to southeast as we go through the day.
What can we expect from conditions the rest of today and tomorrow? Is there any relief on the horizon?
Yes, there is.
So the real key to today will be if we get the sun out this afternoon and if that can cause some melting in the Houston area – that could help clear up the roads a little bit.
However, temperatures are going to plummet tonight with clear skies and no wind, and now fresh snow on the ground. So we’re talking about low temperatures in the teens and near 20 degrees for the Houston area. And anything that melts today will pretty much instantly refreeze tonight.
So expect continued travel trouble into tomorrow morning. And then by tomorrow afternoon, we should get up near 40 [degrees] and that’ll really go to work on melting a lot of this. And hopefully we’re done with at that point. We get back up into the 50s by Thursday and into the 60s this weekend.
More normal Texas winter weather.
That’s right.
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Any other advice for Texans coping with this unprecedented weather in some parts?
Yeah, it’s pretty remarkable. You know, on a statewide level, not terrible, overall, in terms of temperature. We’ve had colder in recent years, but certainly the snow adds an interesting dimension to everything.
Really, the best advice is to just stay off the roads. It’s mostly about first responders being able to get out. And you don’t want to get yourself into an accident or something like that. We’re just not used to driving in snow.
Honestly, even growing up in the northeast, the first snow of the year is when the first accidents would happen because everybody was still not comfortable driving in the snow after the previous summer and fall. So here in Texas, where it almost never snows, you can pretty much predict what would happen on the roads.
So just try to stay put, stay home. Have some hot cocoa and let it all pass.
