{"id":131720,"date":"2026-01-21T09:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T09:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/131720\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T09:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T09:55:13","slug":"forecasters-warn-of-a-potentially-catastrophic-storm-from-texas-to-the-carolinas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/131720\/","title":{"rendered":"Forecasters warn of a ‘potentially catastrophic’ storm from Texas to the Carolinas"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures<\/a> in the nation\u2019s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South.<\/p>\n

The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a \u201cwidespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,\u201d said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how people are going to deal with it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Forecasters on Tuesday warned that the ice could weigh down trees and power lines, triggering widespread outages.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you get a half of an inch of ice \u2014 or heaven forbid an inch of ice \u2014 that could be catastrophic,\u201d said Keith Avery, CEO of the Newberry Electric Cooperative in South Carolina.<\/p>\n

Here’s what to know:<\/p>\n

\u2018Great swaths\u2019 of heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain expected<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service warned of “great swaths of heavy snow, sleet, and treacherous freezing rain\u201d starting Friday in much of the nation\u2019s midsection and then shifting toward the East Coast through Sunday.<\/p>\n

Temperatures will be slow to warm in many areas, meaning ice that forms on roads and sidewalks might stick around, forecasters say.<\/p>\n

The exact timing of the approaching storm \u2014 and where it is headed \u2014 remained uncertain on Tuesday. Forecasters say it can be challenging to predict precisely which areas could see rain and which ones could be punished with ice.<\/p>\n

Cold air clashing with rain to fuel a ‘major winter storm\u2019<\/p>\n

An extremely cold arctic air mass is set to dive south from Canada, setting up a clash with the cold temperatures and rain that will be streaming eastward across the southern U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is extreme, even for this being the peak of winter,\u201d National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Jackson said of the cold temperatures.<\/p>\n

When the cold air meets the rain, the likely result will be \u201ca major winter storm with very impactful weather, with all the moisture coming up from the Gulf and encountering all this particularly cold air that\u2019s spilling in,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n

An atmospheric river could set up across the southern U.S.<\/p>\n

An atmospheric river<\/a> of moisture could be in place by the weekend, pulling precipitation across Texas and other states along the Gulf Coast and continuing across Georgia and the Carolinas, forecasters said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlobal models are painting a concerning picture of what this weekend could look like, with an increasingly strong signal for ice storm potential across North Georgia and portions of central Georgia,\u201d according to the National Weather Service’s Atlanta office.<\/p>\n

If significant accumulations of ice strike metro Atlanta, it could be a problem through the weekend since low temperatures early Monday are expected to be around 22 degrees (minus 5.6 Celsius) in Atlanta. The city’s high temperature on Monday is forecast to be around 35 degrees (1.7 Celsius).<\/p>\n

Highway and air travel could be tangled by the storm<\/p>\n

Travel is a major concern, as southern states have less equipment to remove snow and ice from roads, and extremely cold temperatures expected after the storm could prevent ice from melting for several days. In Michigan, more than 100 vehicles crashed<\/a> into each other or slid off an interstate southwest of Grand Rapids on Monday.<\/p>\n

The storm is also expected to impact many of the nation\u2019s major hub airports, including those in Dallas; Atlanta; Memphis, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Polar air from Canada to keep northern states in a deep freeze<\/p>\n

Unusually cold temperatures are already in place across much of the northern tier of the U.S., but the blast of arctic air expected later this week \u201cwill be the coldest yet,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a large sprawling vortex of low pressure centered over Hudson Bay,\u201d Jackson said of the sea in northern Canada that\u2019s connected to the Arctic Ocean. \u201cAnd this is dominating the weather over all of North America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Texas could be a harbinger for other parts of the South<\/p>\n

Some of the storm\u2019s earliest impacts could be in Texas on Friday, as the arctic air mass slides south through much of the state, National Weather Service forecaster Sam Shamburger said in a briefing on the storm.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, we\u2019re expecting rain to move into much of the state,\u201d Shamburger said.<\/p>\n

Low temperatures could fall into the 20s or even the teens in parts of Texas by Saturday, with the potential for a wintery mix of weather in the northern part of the state.<\/p>\n

Forecasters cautioned that significant uncertainty remains, particularly over how much ice or snow could fall across north and central Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a very difficult forecast,\u201d Shamburger said.<\/p>\n

At an Arkansas hardware store, customers gear up for storm<\/p>\n

In Little Rock, Arkansas, a steady stream of customers on Tuesday were stocking up on supplies at Fuller and Son Hardware.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now parents of young children are getting sleds,\u201d said James Carter, the company\u2019s director of operations.<\/p>\n

People were also getting shovels, ice-melting products and covers for outside faucets to keep them from freezing, since low temperatures in the Little Rock area are forecast to fall into the teens, he said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Panjwani reported from Washington. Associated Press Writers Seth Borenstein in Washington and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[56461,56456,56339,56457,12264,56460,56459,1971,56458,27,29,28,12398],"class_list":{"0":"post-131720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-atmospheric-river","9":"tag-bryan-jackson","10":"tag-cold-temperatures","11":"tag-forecasters","12":"tag-freezing-rain","13":"tag-heavy-snow","14":"tag-ice-storm","15":"tag-national-weather-service","16":"tag-northern-tier","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-texas-headlines","19":"tag-texas-news","20":"tag-winter-storm"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}