A powerful and rare winter storm swept across the South on Tuesday, bringing the first-ever Blizzard Warning to the Gulf Coast and blasting communities from Texas to Florida to the Carolinas with record-shattering snow that snarled travel and brought daily life to a halt.

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.

Louisiana isn’t known for extreme cold weather—but that changed Tuesday, when the National Weather Service issued its first-ever blizzard warning for much of the state.

The Gulf Coast is bracing for its first-ever blizzard, with the warning sent Tuesday covering southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana along the Interstate 10 corridor. Heavy