Blizzard blanketed South Louisiana

How extreme was the blizzard on Tuesday?
The Eunice Right to Life March scheduled on Wednesday was canceled as snow and ice blanketed Eunice. It was the first cancellation of the march since it started in 1973.
Still, Eunice Mayor Scott Fontenot said the city fared pretty well from the storm that dumped more than 8 inches of snow and dropped temperatures to 8 degrees.
The storm shut down most activity on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“It’s going out better than I thought it was going to be,” Fontenot said Thursday afternoon.
“I talked with LAWCO. Water pressure never really dipped low. So, they stayed really good with that. As far as city buildings, everything was good. We did get a lot of ice on the roads,” he said.
One sign of improving road conditions was Walmart reopened on Wednesday, he said. And City Hall reopened on Thursday morning.
“Power went out temporarily, I think, on the north side of Eunice,” he said. There was another power outage on the southwestern edge of the city in Acadia Parish.
Power was restored in both areas within hours, he said.
But the storm with its powdery, flaky snow was driven by 30-plus mile an hour winds.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, I live on Park Avenue, and looking across the boulevard, you couldn’t even see the houses across the street,” he said.
“At one point, it was amazing. It got scary, though. You didn’t know if it was going to end. It was, I think, there was one period within like an hour and a half where it really came down a lot, and that’s when it accumulated pretty much towards the end,” he said.
The shutdown of Interstate 10 on Tuesday brought heavy traffic to Eunice on U.S. 190 and La. 13.
The mayor said he is not aware of any injuries resulting from the storm.
“We got really lucky,” he said.
Fontenot said he researched newspaper records and found a 22-inch snowfall in Rayne in 1895, but no mention of snow in Eunice.
“130 years later, it was a perfect storm,” he said of Tuesday’s blizzard. “You had the arctic blast and you had this low in the Gulf that just set up perfectly. If it wasn’t snow it would have flooded. We got lucky.”
St. Landry Parish President Jessie Bellard who said the parish came out OK from the snowfall.
“We were able to grade the snow off the roads to get traffic flowing as soon as we could,” he said Thursday afternoon.
Bellard was speaking from a shelter at the former Indian Hills Country Club in Opelousas where 30 people were staying.
“We’re trying to place them in places now so we can close tomorrow,” he said.
Bellard said he didn’t know of any major issues such as people unable to get to hospitals due to the snow.
Activity in the parish began coming back on Thursday and he expected by Friday the parish would recover.
“We try to plan for everything, but there’s some things you just can’t plan for. You just let it fall, and then you deal with it after the fact,” he said of the snow.
“We never get this kind of snow ever, ever. It’s pretty, pretty to see, but it’s time for it to go,” he said.
Nola.com reported the following snowfall totals from the National Weather Service.
Grand Coteau: 13.4 inches at 7 a.m. Wednesday.
Rayne: 11.4 inches at 7 a.m. Wednesday.
Church Point: 11.0 inches at 7 a.m. Wednesday.
South Lafayette: 10.5 inches at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
South Branch: 10.5 inches at 10:51 a.m. Tuesday.
Breaux Bridge: 10 inches 7 a.m. Wednesday.
South southwest Scott: 10 inches at 3:40 p.m. Tuesday.
Lafayette: 9.5 inches at 1:28 p.m. Tuesday.
North Maurice: 9.3 inches at 5:09 p.m. Tuesday.
West southwest Lafayette: 9.2 inches at 6:00 a.m. Wednesday.
West northwest Carencro: 9.0 inches at 2:00 p.m. Tuesday.
North East Milton: 9 inches at 2:15 p.m. Tuesday.
Evangeline: 9 inches at 12:10 p.m. Tuesday.
Branch: 9 inches at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
East Duson: 8.5 inches at 4:33 p.m. Tuesday.
Eunice: 8.3 inches at 11:18 a.m. Tuesday.
St. Martinville: 8.1 inches at 7 a.m. Wednesday.
South Jennings: 8.1 inches at 6 a.m. Wednesday.
Youngsville: 8 inches at 10:35 a.m. Tuesday.
Northwest Lydia: 8 inch at 5:10 p.m. Tuesday.
Kaplan: 7 inches at 9:35 a.m. Tuesday.
West Cankton: 7.0 inches at 11 a.m. Tuesday.
Abbeville: 6 inches at 7 a.m. Tuesday.
Opelousas: 6 inches at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.