Roughly 40 million people from Texas to the Carolinas are under winter weather alerts as a rare winter storm amid bone-chilling temperatures brings potentially historic snowfall to cities unused to harsh,

By noon, the National Weather Service had reported about 4 inches of snow in New Orleans. The storm prompted the first ever blizzard warnings for several coastal counties near the Texas-Louisiana border, and snow plows were at the ready in the Florida Panhandle, according to the Associated Press.

The snow storm could hit over a dozen states through Wednesday, including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.