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Powerful Winter Storm That Dumped Snow in US South Maintains Its Icy Grip

Atlanta Resident Harry Crowell throws a snowball as Atlanta residents receive a snowstorm on January 10, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Getty Images/AFP)
Atlanta Resident Harry Crowell throws a snowball as Atlanta residents receive a snowstorm on January 10, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Powerful Winter Storm That Dumped Snow in US South Maintains Its Icy Grip

Atlanta Resident Harry Crowell throws a snowball as Atlanta residents receive a snowstorm on January 10, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Getty Images/AFP)
Atlanta Resident Harry Crowell throws a snowball as Atlanta residents receive a snowstorm on January 10, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Getty Images/AFP)

A winter storm that dropped heavy snow and glazed roads throughout the US South was maintaining its icy grip on much of the region into the weekend.

Power outage numbers around Atlanta crept up Friday night as meteorologists warned of accumulating freezing rain. More than 110,000 customers were without electricity, mostly in the Atlanta area.

“As our crews anticipated based on the forecast, additional freezing rain and falling trees have caused power outages as the sun has gone down,” Georgia Power said via social media.

“Conditions overnight remain challenging with icy roads and winds, but as long as it is safe — we will be working,” the utility said.

Georgia transportation officials urged people to stay off the roads until midday Saturday, and snow and ice was also forecast to continue in the Carolinas, Virginia and the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.

Earlier this week the storm brought heavy snow and slicked roads across much of Texas and Oklahoma before moving east. Arkansas and North Carolina mobilized National Guard troops for tasks such as helping stranded motorists, and governors in multiple states declared states of emergency.

School was canceled for millions of children from Texas to Georgia and as far east as South Carolina, giving them a rare snow day.

The storm piled up more than a year’s worth of snowfall on some cities.

As much as a foot (about 31 centimeters) fell in parts of Arkansas, and there were reports of nearly 10 inches (about 25 centimeters) in Little Rock, which averages 3.8 inches (9.7 centimeters) a year.

More than 7 inches (about 18 centimeters) fell at Memphis International Airport in Tennessee since late Thursday. The city usually sees 2.7 inches (6.9 centimeters) a year. City officials in Memphis were also concerned that wet roads would freeze overnight.

The wintry mix of sleet, snow and ice has made travel treacherous in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Sleet and snow that fell in South Carolina and North Carolina was changing to freezing rain.

For kids home from school Friday, the wet snow also packed into a pretty good snowball.

In Atlanta, Mikayla Johnson, 12, was making snow angels and snow figures.

“My first thought was, ‘Wow!’” said Mikayla, who was outdoors with her father, Nate. “We haven’t had snow since I was, like, 4 — good snow, at least. So I was really happy.”

The storm dumped as much as 7 inches (about 18 centimeters) in some spots in central Oklahoma and northern Texas.

Snow began falling in metro Atlanta before dawn Friday, leading to hundreds of flights being cancelled and hundreds more delayed at the world's busiest airport, according to flight tracking software FlightAware.

Four passengers were injured after a Delta plane bound for Minneapolis aborted takeoff that morning, according to the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. One passenger was hospitalized, while three people were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

The incident contributed to further delays, although Delta said it was unclear whether the weather had anything to do with the flight aborting its takeoff. The airline said there was an indication of an engine issue.

Other airports with significant delays and cancellations included those in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dallas-Fort Worth and Nashville, Tennessee.

The storm could continue to affect air traffic, the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday night.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott urged residents to avoid driving if possible.

The polar vortex of ultra-cold air usually spins around the North Pole, but it sometimes ventures south into the US, Europe and Asia. Some experts say such events are happening more frequently, paradoxically, because of a warming world.

The cold snap coincided with rare January wildfires tearing through the Los Angeles area.

As much as 8 inches (about 20 centimeters) of snow was forecast in parts of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia through Saturday, the National Weather Service said.

Officials urged drivers to give plows space after a semitrailer hit a Tennessee Department of Transportation truck in Smith County.

Parts of South Carolina were seeing their first wintry weather in three years. The state Department of Transportation treated interstates and other major highways from Columbia northward, but vehicles were slipping off icy Interstate 95 south of the city.

A public outdoor inauguration ceremony Saturday in Raleigh, North Carolina, for Gov. Josh Stein and other elected officials was canceled. The storm’s trajectory overlapped with much of the western North Carolina area impacted by Hurricane Helene last year.

In Richmond, Virginia. Mayor Danny Avula said officials brought in extra resources to monitor the city’s water treatment facility, which suffered a multiday outage following a snowstorm earlier in the week, including a new backup battery and additional water filters.

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Varieties

Saturn's Moon Titan May Not Have a Buried Ocean as Long Suspected, New Study Suggests

This image made by the Cassini spacecraft and provided by NASA on March 12, 2006, shows two of Saturn's moons, the small Epimetheus and smog-enshrouded Titan, with Saturn's A and F rings stretching across the frame. (NASA via AP)
This image made by the Cassini spacecraft and provided by NASA on March 12, 2006, shows two of Saturn's moons, the small Epimetheus and smog-enshrouded Titan, with Saturn's A and F rings stretching across the frame. (NASA via AP)
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Saturn's Moon Titan May Not Have a Buried Ocean as Long Suspected, New Study Suggests

This image made by the Cassini spacecraft and provided by NASA on March 12, 2006, shows two of Saturn's moons, the small Epimetheus and smog-enshrouded Titan, with Saturn's A and F rings stretching across the frame. (NASA via AP)
This image made by the Cassini spacecraft and provided by NASA on March 12, 2006, shows two of Saturn's moons, the small Epimetheus and smog-enshrouded Titan, with Saturn's A and F rings stretching across the frame. (NASA via AP)

Saturn's giant moon Titan may not have a vast underground ocean after all.

Titan instead may hold deep layers of ice and slush more akin to Earth’s polar seas, with pockets of melted water where life could possibly survive and even thrive, scientists reported Wednesday.

The team led by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory challenged the decade-long assumption of a buried global ocean at Titan after taking a fresh look at observations made years ago by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft around Saturn.

They stress that no one has found any signs of life at Titan, the solar system’s second largest moon spanning 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) and brimming with lakes of liquid methane on its frosty surface, The AP news reported.

But with the latest findings suggesting a slushy, near-melting environment, “there is strong justification for continued optimism regarding the potential for extraterrestrial life,” said the University of Washington’s Baptiste Journaux, who took part in the study published in the journal Nature.

As to what form of life that might be, possibly strictly microscopic, “nature has repeatedly demonstrated far greater creativity than the most imaginative scientists," he said in an email.

JPL’s Flavio Petricca, the lead author, said Titan’s ocean may have frozen in the past and is currently melting, or its hydrosphere might be evolving toward complete freezing.

Computer models suggest these layers of ice, slush and water extend to a depth of more than 340 miles (550 kilometers). The outer ice shell is thought to be about 100 miles (170 kilometers) deep, covering layers of slush and pools of water that could go down another 250 miles (400 kilometers). This water could be as warm as 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius).

Because Titan is tidally locked, the same side of the moon faces Saturn all the time, just like our own moon and Earth. Saturn’s gravitational pull is so intense that it deforms the moon’s surface, creating bulges as high as 30 feet (10 meters) when the two bodies are closest.

Through improved data processing, Petricca and his team managed to measure the timing between the peak gravitational tug and the rising of Titan’s surface. If the moon held a wet ocean, the effect would be immediate, Petricca said, but a 15-hour gap was detected, indicating an interior of slushy ice with pockets of liquid water. Computer modeling of Titan’s orientation in space supported their theory.

Sapienza University of Rome’s Luciano Iess, whose previous studies using Cassini data indicated a hidden ocean at Titan, is not convinced by the latest findings.

While “certainly intriguing and will stimulate renewed discussion ... at present, the available evidence looks certainly not sufficient to exclude Titan from the family of ocean worlds," Iess said in an email.

NASA’s planned Dragonfly mission — featuring a helicopter-type craft due to launch to Titan later this decade — is expected to provide more clarity on the moon’s innards. Journaux is part of that team.

Saturn leads the solar system’s moon inventory with 274. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is just a little larger than Titan, with a possible underground ocean. Other suspected water worlds include Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa, both of which are believed to have geysers of water erupting from their frozen crusts.

Launched in 1997, Cassini reached Saturn in 2004, orbiting the ringed planet and flying past its moons until deliberately plunging through Saturn’s atmosphere in 2017.

Varieties

Catch the Ursid Meteor Shower as it Peaks just before Christmas

People look up to the sky from an observatory near the village of Avren, Bulgaria, Aug. 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Petar Petrov, File)
People look up to the sky from an observatory near the village of Avren, Bulgaria, Aug. 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Petar Petrov, File)
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Catch the Ursid Meteor Shower as it Peaks just before Christmas

People look up to the sky from an observatory near the village of Avren, Bulgaria, Aug. 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Petar Petrov, File)
People look up to the sky from an observatory near the village of Avren, Bulgaria, Aug. 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Petar Petrov, File)

The last major meteor shower of the year, known as the Ursids, peaks soon, bringing glowing streaks to nighttime and early morning skies. Compared to other meteor showers, it's more subdued, but experts say it's still worth a glimpse.

Meteor showers happen when space rocks hit Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds and burn up, gaining fiery tails — the end of a “shooting star.” Random meteors are visible from Earth on any given clear night, but more predictable meteor showers happen yearly when Earth passes through streams of cosmic leftovers from comets or asteroids, Reuters reported.

The Ursids peak Sunday night into Monday morning and will be visible until Dec. 26 from the Northern Hemisphere. Skygazers usually see five to 10 meteors per hour during the height and there's a possibility for outbursts of up to 25 meteors per hour, according to the American Meteor Society.

How active a shower will appear from Earth depends on the amount of debris and the moon's brightness, which can blot out glowing meteors. The Ursids feature less space debris than other showers like the Geminids, but the narrow crescent moon won't be much of an obstacle when they peak.

No special equipment is needed to view a meteor shower. To see the Ursids, which hail from a comet called 8P/Tuttle, bundle up and get away from city lights.

“The darker your sky, the better the shower is going to be,” said astronomer Peter Brown with Western University in Canada.

The meteors can be seen over the whole sky, but all the streaks will seem to come from a central point near a constellation for which the shower is named. In this case, that's the constellation Ursa Minor, also known as the Little Dipper.

Once it gets dark, avoid bright lights from cellphones, which will make it harder for your eyes to adjust.

Varieties

Private Astronaut Jared Isaacman Becomes NASA Chief

NASA's next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with its Orion crew capsule perched on top, is seen in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) before it is scheduled to make a slow-motion journey to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, US March 16, 2022. REUTERS/Thom Baur
NASA's next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with its Orion crew capsule perched on top, is seen in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) before it is scheduled to make a slow-motion journey to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, US March 16, 2022. REUTERS/Thom Baur
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Private Astronaut Jared Isaacman Becomes NASA Chief

NASA's next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with its Orion crew capsule perched on top, is seen in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) before it is scheduled to make a slow-motion journey to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, US March 16, 2022. REUTERS/Thom Baur
NASA's next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with its Orion crew capsule perched on top, is seen in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) before it is scheduled to make a slow-motion journey to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, US March 16, 2022. REUTERS/Thom Baur

The US Senate confirmed billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman to become President Donald Trump's NASA administrator, making an advocate of Mars missions and a former associate of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk the space agency's 15th leader. The vote on Isaacman, who Trump removed and then renamed as NASA administrator nominee this year, passed 67-30, two weeks after he told senators in his second hearing that NASA must pick up the pace in beating China back to the moon this decade, Reuters reported.

Isaacman will lead an agency of 14,000 employees as it invests billions of dollars into its most ambitious space exploration endeavor yet: returning humans to the moon to seed a long-term presence on the surface before eventually sending astronauts to Mars.

NASA WORKFORCE CUT IN EFFICIENCY PUSH

The White House, in its government efficiency push led by Musk, slashed NASA's workforce by 20% and has sought to cut the agency's 2026 budget by roughly 25% from its usual $25 billion, imperiling dozens of space-science programs that scientists and some officials regard as priorities.

Isaacman envisions a revamped focus on sending missions to Mars on top of the Artemis moon effort, as well as a greater dependence on private companies such as SpaceX to save taxpayer money and stimulate private-sector competition.

Of the 67 votes in Isaacman's favor, 16 were from Democrats, joining 51 from Republicans. All 30 votes against his confirmation were from Democrats.

Maria Cantwell, the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees NASA, has criticized the Trump administration's efforts to cut NASA's science unit. She supported Isaacman's confirmation on Wednesday.

"During his nomination process, Mr. Isaacman emphasized the importance of developing a pipeline of future scientists, engineers, researchers, (and) astronauts to support the science and technology development and align with NASA's objectives. I strongly agree," Cantwell said.

Some Democratic senators said during Isaacman's hearing on December 3 they are concerned about Isaacman's closeness to Musk, whose company holds about $15 billion in NASA contracts and could benefit from certain policies Isaacman has advocated.

Musk advocated for Isaacman's nomination when Trump was elected in 2024. Musk had sought to realign the US space program with a greater focus on Mars during his stint as a close adviser to Trump.

Senate Republicans and some Democrats, including Cantwell, have also stressed urgency in NASA's moon race with China, which is aiming to send its astronauts to the lunar surface by 2030. NASA faces a shaky target of 2028 using its Space Launch System rocket and SpaceX's giant Starship rocket, under development, as the lander.

Acting NASA chief Sean Duffy, who also leads the US Transportation Department, congratulated Isaacman on X, wishing Isaacman "success as he begins his tenure and leads NASA as we go back to the Moon in 2028 and beat China."