Some areas of New Orleans and Houston got more than four inches of snow Tuesday morning in a historic winter storm hitting the south.

As a meteorologist, waking up to 4 to 6 inches of snow locally is certainly fun and interesting, but well within typical January weather for Southern New England. For me, what’s really interesting is what is forecast to take place across the Gulf Coast Tuesday with a perhaps unprecedented amount of snow for a very wide swath from Texas to parts of Florida.

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.