Southern US winter storm snarls air travel, threatens citrus

Brian K. Sullivan, Bloomberg News on Jan 31, 2026

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A winter storm is dropping snow across the South, where more than 1,500 flights have been canceled, as the eastern U.S. faces a continued deep freeze, threatening records all the way to south Florida and menacing citrus crops.

Winter storm warnings cover parts of southern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, the Carolinas and northeastern Georgia as the storm builds along the southern Atlantic coast, threatening to bring 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 centimeters) of snow across a wide area, said Bob Oravec, a senior branch forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. The region will also be swept by winds gusting as high as 45 miles (72 kilometers) per hour in some places.

“The storm is just getting its act together,” Oravec said. “Later tonight, around midnight, the winds should really be howling on the coast and there could be some blizzard conditions on the Outer Banks” of North Carolina.

The storm means a second weekend of flight delays and cancellations, but shouldn’t be as severe as the previous round, when more than 10,000 trips were scrubbed across the country.

More than 185,000 homes and businesses, mainly in Louisiana, Tennessee and Mississippi, were without power early Saturday, according to PowerOutage.com. In addition to the snow, much of the eastern U.S. is gripped by severe cold, with some 186 daily records potentially being tied or broken. Temperatures have lingered 20F to 25F (11C to 14C) below average for more than a week, the Weather Prediction Center said.

“The worst days for the cold are today and tomorrow,” Oravec said.

Flight cancellations reached 1,577 by 7 a.m. ET on Saturday, with Atlanta, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham airports the hardest hit, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking company.

The cold also threatens citrus growers, with most of Polk County in central Florida, the state’s biggest producing region, within the zone expected to face below-freezing temperatures. That county in the prior season produced nearly 30% of Florida’s total orange output in terms of boxes, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The storm is expected to pull into the Atlantic, possibly just grazing the eastern tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts with about 3 inches of snow, but sparing most of the Northeast.

The cold will continue, however. Temperatures will moderate next week but stay below normal, Oravec said. And computer forecast models point to more winter storms across the East in the coming weeks.

“The one ingredient you need if you want a big winter storm is cold air, and it looks like the cold air will continue into the middle of February,” Oravec said.