Winter Storm Pax Hits the South

Winter Storm Pax will bring a long swath of ice and snow across the South through midweek, and the ice may accumulate enough in some areas to knock out power for thousands of people and litter roads with fallen tree limbs and downed wires. Travel will become difficult, if not impossible, in the hardest-hit areas.
There are already reports of long queues at grocery stores and gas stations in the Atlanta area in anticipation of this winter storm.

The southern side of Winter Storm Pax begins the way several previous events, including Leon, did. Instead of a well-defined low pressure system, there will instead be a broad area of moist, rising air across the South while very cold arctic air pushes in from the Midwest. This combination will produce an east-west stripe of wintry weather. Indeed, through Tuesday there probably won't be a low pressure center to track at all.

Late Tuesday into Wednesday, another wave of moisture will spread a more significant round of wintry precipitation across the South as weak low pressure forms in the Gulf of Mexico and tracks eastward. This moisture will ride over the top of a cold air mass nosing its way southward to the east of the Appalachians.
Initially, freezing rain, sleet and some snow will spread from northeast Texas to northern Louisiana, southern Arkansas, northern and central Mississippi, Alabama, and middle and west Tennessee.
 


http://www.weather.com/news/weather-winter/winter-storm-pax-forecast-20140209