To most of North Carolina, the most difficult thing about a rare, general snow is not the flakes. What keeps on afterwards, it is a tenacious crust, which hardens a little with each day, and becomes a week of black ice at night, transforming the streets so well known into a week of trial and planning.
The tempest which brought in these wintry scenes was a strong nor’easter which quickly turned into a bomb cyclone over the ocean forcing Arctic air far southward. In North Carolina, the National Weather Service declared it a “historic storm,” which caused a lot of snowfall, severe winds in the coastal areas, and chilly weather, which lasted longer than the headline moment.
That this event had so much scale was not just about totals in a few spots, but also the geography. North Carolina experienced measurable snow in every one of its 100 counties the first time since 2014, which is an odd footprint of the state, where marginal temperatures frequently transform storms into sloppy conglomerates. In this instance there was already a layer of chilled air in the Arctic; on Saturday surface temperatures were mostly in the teens in some sections of the state, which made the snow right through the mountains to the coastal area favourable. A storm track coming close to shore then completed the task, moistening the cold air and letting the accumulations pile up where inhabitants can seldom see drifts longer than a day.
Charlotte, who always has been a beacon of Piedmont “bad snow luck,” was at last struck a clean blow. The airport at the city recorded the largest snowfall in the city since 2004, with total 11.4 inches and other surrounding communities along the I-85 corridor registered even higher amounts such as 16 inches in Kannapolis and Lexington. To the far east, the central Coastal Plain and Crystal Coast became indeed outstanding and a foot of snow was reported in places that had not fallen on the ground in many a long time, and one stretch along the Pamlico River had not received a foot of snow in 67 years.
The Triangle was different: less blizzard and more bizarre patchy winter storm reality. Meteorologists talked of a “dry slot” that had left Durham and Wake counties staring at heavier bands of the storm falling east and west and then pushed later on in Raleigh, just enough to tie up the roads, yet not enough to take away the feeling that the storm had squeezed through a needle.
Then there was the section that is highlighted by the emergency managers and the part that most households do not take seriously. Gov. Josh Stein indicated over a 1,000 crashes on snowy roads over the weekend, and also warned, the night temperatures are not going to go over freezing this week, and so “Black ice is going to remain a risk throughout the week because of below-freezing night-time temperatures. For your own safety and for the safety of the people clearing the roads, please stay at home if you possibly can. This is no joke.”
There were also dangers brought about by cold on its own, not necessarily by the snow depth. The National Weather Service is able to distinguish between frostbite, which is frozen skin and other tissues on the extremities, and hypothermia, when the temperature drops below 95degF in the core and may be followed by confusion and loss of coordination. Those dangers run even further than a storm map ceasing to display rainfall.
The extent of the storm also reestablished expectations to the south. The coldest morning in Miami since 2010 was recorded in Florida at 35degF and record lows were reported in a number of cities, and flurries were seen as far south as Naples. Prolonged close to freezing weather may push reptiles into a temporary condition called torpor where they lose control of their muscles- one reason Florida wildlife officials were warning people about cold-stunned iguanas.
In North Carolina, maybe the wider moral could be what happens when rare snow is combined with the normal infrastructure instead of the totals of one weekend. Roads, schools and places of work can be opened in a short time, but the refreeze process does not. The storm had ceased; winter-time, to most, remained.
