A major storm spread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain across the southern United States on Wednesday, breaking snow records and treating the region to unaccustomed perils and wintertime joy. From Texas through the Deep South, down into Florida and to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, snow and sleet made for accumulating ice in New Orleans, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Florida and other major cities. At least three deaths were attributed to the cold as dangerous below-freezing temperatures with even colder wind chills settled in. Arctic air also plunged much of the Midwest and the eastern U.S. into a deep freeze, grounding hundreds of flights. Government offices remained closed, as were classrooms for more than a million students more accustomed to hurricane dismissals than snow days. New Englanders know what to do in weather like this: Terry Fraser of Cape Cod, Massachusetts didn’t have her trusty windshield scraper while visiting her new granddaughter in Brunswick, Georgia, so she used a plastic store discount card to remove the snow and ice from her rental SUV in a frozen hotel parking lot. “This is what we do up north when you don’t have a scraper,” Fraser said. “Hey, it works.” Frasier had one additional bit of advice: “Don’t use your credit card, because then you can’t go shopping.” In Tallahassee, Florida, the Holmes family set their alarms early on Wednesday and found a snow-covered slope before it melted away. Nine-year-old Layla and 12-year-old Rawley used what they had: a boogie board and a skimboard. “Gotta get creative in Florida!” mom Alicia Holmes said. Anchorage wants its snow back The record 10-inch (25-centimeter) snowfall in New Orleans was more than double what Anchorage, Alaska, has received since the beginning of December, the National Weather Service said. “We’d like our snow back,” the weather service office in Anchorage joked in a post on X on Wednesday. “Or at least some King Cake in return.” It also was warmer Wednesday morning in Anchorage than in New Orleans, Atlanta, Jacksonville or Charlotte, North Carolina, according to the weather service. Even the interstate closes The snow and ice also closed highways — including many miles of the nation’s southernmost interstate, I-10, as it stretches from Florida to Texas. Especially prone to freezing were the elevated roads and bridges that run over Louisiana’s bayous. “Louisiana, if you can, just hang in there,” Gov. Jeff Landry said, warning that Tuesday’s “magical” snow day would turn dangerous Wednesday as conditions worsened. Highways were deserted along long stretches in Louisiana and Georgia, where a jackknifed truck closed part of the snowy interchange between Interstate 16 and Interstate 95. In Charleston, South Carolina, it took crews nearly 16 hours to reopen travel in one direction along the massive 2 1/2 mile (4 kilometer) Ravenel Bridge that carries about 100,000 vehicles a day. The icy conditions plagued motorists in Georgia, where troopers responded to more than 1,000 calls for help. Hundreds of trucks backed up near a crash on Interstate 75 between Macon and Atlanta. Some motorists slept in their vehicles overnight as even a fire truck got stuck on the ice, DeKalb County authorities said. And police appealed to the owners of dozens of cars abandoned at the bottom of a glazed-over hill in Snellville to retrieve their vehicles as soon as it’s […]