A major storm spread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain across the southern United States on Wednesday, breaking snow records and treating the region to unaccustomed perils and wintertime joy.

From Texas through the Deep South, down into Florida and to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, snow and sleet made for accumulating ice in major cities such as New Orleans, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Florida. In Alabama, the weight of the snow collapsed the dome of the Mobile Civic Center, which was being demolished to make way for a new entertainment facility.

At least eight deaths were attributed to the storm as dangerous below-freezing temperatures with even colder wind chills settled in. Arctic air also plunged much of the Midwest and the eastern U.S. into a deep freeze, grounding hundreds of flights. Government offices remained closed, as were classrooms for more than a million students more accustomed to hurricane dismissals than snow.

New Englanders know what to do in weather like this: Terry Fraser of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, didn’t have her trusty windshield scraper while visiting her new granddaughter in Brunswick, Georgia, so she used a plastic store discount card to remove the snow and ice from her rental SUV in a frozen hotel parking lot.

“This is what we do up north when you don’t have a scraper,” Fraser said. “Hey, it works.”

In Tallahassee, Florida, the Holmes family set their alarms early on Wednesday and found a snow-covered slope before it melted away. Nine-year-old Layla and 12-year-old Rawley used what they had: a boogie board and a skimboard “Gotta get creative in Florida!” mom Alicia Holmes said.

Anchorage wants its snow back

The record 10-inch snowfall in New Orleans was more than double what Anchorage, Alaska, has received since the beginning of December, the National Weather Service said.“We’d like our snow back,” the weather service office in Anchorage joked in a post on X.

“Or at least some King Cake in return.”

It also was warmer Wednesday morning in Anchorage than in New Orleans, Atlanta, Jacksonville or Charlotte, North Carolina, according to the weather service.

Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are forecast to persist through southern areas this morning with widespread frost continuing in some places. High temperatures are expected to rebound well above freezing today in places like New Orleans, and by Friday in Tallahassee and the coastal Carolinas.

2,000 Flights canceled

Nearly 2,000 U.S. flights were canceled and 2,300 more were delayed by midday Wednesday, according to online tracker FlightAware.com. Record demands for electricity to stay warm were met by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides power to more than 10 million customers in seven states, and PJM Interconnection, which operates the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid. But more than 100,000 customers were without power across the region Wednesday morning, according to the website PowerOutage.us.