A winter storm brought below-freezing temperatures and heavy snow to the southeastern United States in January 2025. The storm dumped record snowfall on the region, prompting flight cancellations and the closure of more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) of Interstate 10, according to news reports.
Temperatures plunged into the single digits in southern Texas and Louisiana on January 22, when an arctic airmass met with a low-pressure system over the Gulf Coast. The airport in Baton Rouge recorded a temperature of 7 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 14 degrees Celsius), the lowest measured there in 95 years of record keeping.
Bands of winter weather brought blizzard conditions to southwestern Louisiana, a region unaccustomed to snow and ice. Wind gusts of 30 to 40 miles (50 to 65 kilometers) per hour accompanied the heavy snow and led to limited visibility. Several cities saw all-time records for snow totals on January 22, including New Orleans, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; and Pensacola, Florida. About 8 inches (20 centimeters) of snow fell in New Orleans and 5 inches (13 centimeters) in Pensacola.
Flakes continued to fall in the Carolinas and southeast Virginia on January 22, when the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image. Large swaths of the Gulf Coast look like a frozen tundra. Bright white snow along the winding course of the Mississippi River stands out.
“Many of the old river channels of the Mississippi can be seen in the image,” said Alex Kolker, a professor of coastal geology at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. “In a delta like this, riverbanks are higher than other areas because sediment was deposited here over many years. These lands accumulated a little more snow and show up brighter in the image.”
The rare storm brought more snow to New Orleans than has fallen in Anchorage, Alaska, since the start of meteorological winter, noted the National Weather Service. Cold lingered in the south on the morning of January 23, and large stretches of Interstate 10 were still closed due to icy conditions.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Emily Cassidy.
