A major winter storm slammed the southern US Tuesday, blanketing parts of the Gulf Coast with record-breaking snowfall in a region largely unaccustomed to extreme winter weather.

It's going to be a long time before some areas are back to normal following a once-in-a-lifetime winter storm that pummeled the South, all the way down to the Gulf Coast.

Roughly 40 million people from Texas to the Carolinas are under winter weather alerts as a rare winter storm amid bone-chilling temperatures brings potentially historic snowfall to cities unused to harsh,

Impacts will begin in east Texas by Monday night. Ice and snow could contribute to power outages amid freezing temperatures.

A rare winter storm charging through Texas and the northern Gulf Coast on Tuesday has closed highways and airports and prompted the first blizzard warning for

A rare winter storm charging through Texas and the northern Gulf Coast on Tuesday has closed highways and airports and prompted the first blizzard warning for southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana.

A historic, dangerous and deadly winter storm stretching over 1,500 miles is blanketing the southern U.S. with heavy snow, including areas of the Texas and Louisiana Gulf coasts under their first-ever Blizzard Warnings.

Snow was falling in New Orleans, where as much as 8 inches were expected to accumulate by the end of the day, threatening to tie a record set in 1895.

The NWS said up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of snow fell in the Houston area. Texas transportation officials said more than 20 snowplows were in use across nearly 12,000 lane miles in the Houston area, which lacks its own city or county plows.

Historic, once-in-a-generation, rare, unbelievable. Each can describe this incredible winter storm, which rewrote the record books and will be remembered for generations to come after heavy snow fell Tuesday from Texas to Florida to the Carolinas.

The powerful storm, fueled by a whirling mass of cold air that usually extends across the Arctic, was expected to leave much of the South in the low-teens or single-digit degrees.