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

A winter storm had blanketed much of Arkansas in snow by Thursday evening while leaving residents in southern parts of the state coping with a mix of ice and rain.

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — A developing winter storm threatens to drop snow, sleet and freezing rain on parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas as frigid air that escaped the Arctic plunges temperatures to subfreezing levels in some of the southernmost points of the U.S.