A major winter storm slammed the southern US Tuesday, blanketing parts of the Gulf Coast with record-breaking snowfall in a region largely unaccustomed to extreme winter weather.

A winter storm prompted a National Weather Service office in Louisiana to issue a first-ever blizzard warning. The storm is causing dangerous conditions from Texas to North Carolina.

Florida's capital city could be in line for a historic and thrilling snow day or a harrowing ice storm as a freak winter storm slides across the Gulf Coast.

A rare winter storm churned across the U.S. Gulf Coast on Tuesday, breaking snowfall records more than a century old in a southern region where flurries are unusual, as much of the United States remained in a dangerous deep freeze.

Heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain are expected around the Deep South as a blast of Arctic air plunges much of the Midwest and the eastern US into a deep freeze.

Florida and Texas were both under winter storm warning from the National Weather Service (NWS) on Tuesday morning as an arctic air mass caused plunging temperatures and heavy snow along the Gulf Coast.