Rare snowflakes falling from MS to SC

PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - It took back-to-back blizzards to paralyze the nation's capital, but in the Deep South it only takes a couple inches of snow.

Flakes were falling — or threatened — Friday from Texas to the Florida Panhandle and then up along the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina, bringing a rare white landscape to spots that haven't seen snow in a decade or longer. The storm was crawling east out of Texas, where it left the Dallas area with more than a foot of snow, nearly 200 traffic accidents, thousands without power and hundreds of canceled flights.

Far less snow was falling in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, though the effect was still crippling.

Just the anticipation of an inch of snow was enough to close schools in the Florida Panhandle, while classes also were canceled in parts of Alabama. Nearly two-dozen school districts closed across Georgia because of the snow forecast.

In Century, about 40 miles north of Pensacola, 44-year-old Steve Pace scraped some of the remnants of a brief snowfall from the hood of his truck and formed a snowball to throw at his grandson, 6-year-old Kaleb. It only snowed for about 10 minutes before giving way to rain again, but it was enough for Kaleb.

"I've only ever seen snow on TV till now," Kaleb said, smiling.

The southern Alabama city of Andalusia had recorded its largest snowfall since 1973 — 2 inches as of Friday morning. The city of 8,800 near the Florida line was getting ready to close its streets because of snow, which no one could remember happening before, said city building inspector Micah Blair.

"Our pine trees and all are starting to weight up and lean over," Blair said. "Tonight when it gets into the 20s and trees start popping, we could have problems."

Along the Florida-Alabama line, Therman Benson pointed at the snow buildup on the back of his car and laughed as he filled up at a gas station.

"We didn't get snow for Christmas, but we are getting it for Valentine's Day," he said.

Snow began falling late Thursday in southwest Alabama and was still coming down Friday morning, with as much as 2 inches already on the ground, said George T. Moss, owner of the 15-room Timberland Motel in Chatom, about 60 miles north of Mobile.

"I got up this morning and my pickup was just covered," said Moss. "I'm sitting here looking out over my property, 30 or 40 acres, looking at ponds and my property, a deer. It's just real pretty."

Several oceanside communities in South Carolina including Charleston — which hasn't seen recorded snowfall since January 2000 — could see between 2 and 4 inches of snow, said Jonathan Lamb, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Charleston.

And as much as 3 inches could hit Savannah, Ga., where snow was last traced in February 1996 — "and that was only 0.2 inches," Lamb said. It's been two decades since Georgia's oldest city had any notable accumulation, with 3.6 inches falling in December 1989. Normally, temperatures in February don't dip below 41 degrees.

Highway officials across the South warned of treacherous road conditions. The roof of a tire warehouse in west Dallas collapsed under the heavy snow overnight, leaving a gaping hole in the roof but causing no injuries.

American Airlines canceled about 240 flights Friday, mainly at its hub at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, airline spokesman Steve Schlachter said.

The snowfall made this the snowiest winter in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 32 seasons.

In Atlanta, Delta Air Lines canceled 1,100 flights for Friday in anticipation of as much as 2 inches of snow expected in the region. AirTran also said Friday that it was canceling more than 60 flights in or out of Atlanta because of the threat of snow.

The snow hitting the Deep South comes just a week after the first of back-to-back blizzards hit Washington, D.C. — which ended up with about 28 inches of snow — and along the Eastern Seaboard. Residents are still digging out from those storms, which forced the federal government to shut down for about a week.

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Associated Press Writer Jay Reeves contributed to this story from Birmingham, Ala.