NEW ORLEANS — A rare frigid storm charged through Texas and the northern Gulf Coast on Tuesday, blanketing New Orleans and Houston with snow that closed highways, grounded nearly all flights and canceled school for more than a million students more accustomed to hurricane dismissals than snow days.
The storm prompted the first ever blizzard warnings for several coastal counties near the Texas-Louisiana border, and snowplows were at the ready in the Florida Panhandle.
In the Texas capital, two people died in the cold weather, according to a statement from the city of Austin. No details were provided, but the city said emergency crews had responded to more than a dozen ''cold exposure'' calls. Officials said one person died from hypothermia in Georgia.
Snow covered the white-sand beaches of normally sunny vacation spots, including Gulf Shores, Alabama, and Pensacola Beach, Florida. The heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain hitting parts of the Deep South came as a blast of Arctic air plunged much of the Midwest and the eastern U.S. into a deep freeze.
A powdery South made for some head-turning scenes — a snowball fight on a Gulf Shores beach, sledding in a laundry basket in Montgomery, Alabama, pool-tubing down a Houston hill.
One of the country's quirkiest cities, New Orleans, didn't disappoint under the snowy spotlight. There was an attempt at urban skiing along Bourbon Street; a priest and nuns in a snowball fight outside a suburban church; snowboarding behind a golf cart; and sledding down the snow-covered Mississippi River levees on kayaks, cardboard boxes and inflatable alligators.
High school teacher David Delio and his two daughters glided down the levee on a yoga mat and a boogie board.
''This is a white-out in New Orleans, this is a snow-a-cane,'' Delio said. ''We've had tons of hurricane days but never a snow day.''
