Snow is steadily falling across the Triangle, bringing slick roads and power outages
Snow started falling late Thursday afternoon, with forecasters calling for 2 to 3 inches across the Triangle and warning of possibly dangerous road conditions.
At 9:30 p.m., more than 27,700 customers were without power across North Carolina according to state reports, with nearly 7,600 in the dark in mountainous Swain County and nearly 6,300 in Wake County. Large outages also were reported in Vance, Moore, Chatham, Lee, Johnston and Bertie counties.
Triangle school systems, including Wake, Durham and Chapel Hill-Carrboro, announced they would be closed Friday. Some colleges announced classes wouldn’t start until 10 a.m. Boards of Election also made decisions to close early voting poll sites as the snow started coming down.
Flakes were heaviest to the west of Raleigh and expected to drift slowly to the southeast, gradually accumulating overnight. Shortly before 4 p.m., the first flurries hit downtown Raleigh streets. After dark, with temperatures dropping close to freezing, a slush quickly coated roads, making for slippery driving. But roads were largely empty as wet snow kept falling.
The less time that transition takes, the more snow will accumulate across the state, said weather service spokesman Nick Pietro.
“Snow and hazardous travel, obviously, are our biggest concerns,” Pietro said in a Thursday briefing. “We’re not as much concerned with wind and power outages. ... Clearly, hazardous travel is going to be a challenge here, particularly along and north of the Highway 64 corridor and particularly from the Triangle eastward.”
As the storm moved in, the wind kicked up on Jordan Lake and a wave broke loose a section of dock at the New Hope Overlook. Rangers Kate Bolick and Rob Preston paddled out in a canoe to snag it in a snow-rain downpour with the lake 9 feet higher than normal.
“I can’t feel my fingers,” Preston said when back on shore. “You never know what you’re gonna have to do.”
In Garner, Councilman Phil Matthews reported snow mixed with sleet already falling shortly after noon, though temperatures were not yet freezing on the ground.
At Chimney Rock State Park in the North Carolina mountains, rangers posted a Facebook video showing fat flakes filling the air by early afternoon.
A winter weather advisory is in effect from 10 a.m. Thursday to 7 a.m. Friday for much of central North Carolina and the Triad, according to the National Weather Service.
The storm isn’t expected to bring a lot of ice, N.C. Gov Roy Cooper said Thursday, but road crews were standing by.
“You can help them by staying off the roads when conditions deteriorate,” Cooper said.
Officials are not expecting widespread power outages, the governor said.
Snow accumulation
Parts of central North Carolina could see 1 to 2 inches of snow, with “some slightly higher amounts possible across the north central Piedmont,” the National Weather Service said in its Thursday morning update.
Areas to the north and east of the Triangle, including Franklin and Nash counties, are under a winter storm warning from 10 a.m. Thursday to 7 a.m. Friday. The warning means “a significant combination of hazardous weather is occurring or imminent,” according to the National Weather Service.
The storm’s “sweet spot” will be in the coastal plain of Eastern North Carolina, where 3 to 4 inches of snow could fall. In some areas to the northeast, up to 9 inches of snow are possible but highly unlikely, forecasters say.
Driving conditions
Slick spots could start to form on roads starting Thursday afternoon, especially north of U.S. 64, officials say.
The N.C. Department of Transportation has salt stocks and spreaders ready to go, Cooper’s office said Wednesday. But crews aren’t pre-treating roads because rain is expected ahead of the snow.
Temperatures
A lack of freezing temperatures lately means the ground is fairly warm, the National Weather Service said. That could affect how much snow actually sticks to the ground.
In Raleigh, overnight lows could dip into into the 20s.
State officials on Thursday urged drivers to stay off roads, if possible. Col. Glenn McNeill of N.C. State Highway Patrol said black ice is possible Friday morning.
Temperatures should get above freezing by noon Friday, and snow is expected to melt this weekend, according to the weather service.
Agriculture
At Logan’s Garden Shop in downtown Raleigh, workers spent part of Thursday tucking tender flowers and baby vegetables under cover or inside the greenhouse.
Rolling carts filled with blooming candytuft and creeping phlox, emergent peonies and eager primroses snuggled together under a shed roof.
“I would be a little worried about the peas,” said Bridget Zazzara, who has labored among the green leaves at Logan’s off and on for seven years. “I’ll take those into the greenhouse. The cabbages, the spinach, the kale, those are hardy and they should be fine. And I’m going to let the pansies fend for themselves.”
But with temperatures expected to drop to 26 degrees Thursday and bottom out at 19 degrees on Friday, all the new plants that have arrived recently and haven’t had time to acclimate will need protection.
That means the pincushions, snapdragons and dianthus; the sage, parsley and cilantro; and all the little lettuce plants will spend the next couple of nights in the greenhouse.
Andrea Ashby, spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said agronomists spoke Thursday with strawberry growers in Johnston County whose plants already have bloomed because of the unusually warm weather. Growers were working Thursday to cover the plants, she said, to prevent damage from the coming storm.
This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 7:01 AM.
