Florida school district announces closure due to ‘icy road conditions’

OKALOOSA SCHOOLS, Fla. – It seems not even the Sunshine State is safe when it comes to the cold winter weather hitting the U.S.

At least one Florida school district announced Monday its schools would be closed on Tuesday due to “icy road conditions.”

“According to Public Safety Director Patrick Maddox, transportation will be significantly impacted tomorrow due to sub-freezing temperatures and the presence of ice on our roadways making school bus travel unsafe,” district officials wrote to parents of Okaloosa County, located in northwest Florida. “As a result, Okaloosa Schools, along with the surrounding districts in Northwest Florida, will be closed tomorrow.”

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The temperature in Niceville, a city in Okaloosa County, was 48 degrees Monday afternoon, according to the News 6 Pinpoint Weather app. Temperatures were expected to continue to drop overnight and the low on Tuesday is only 26 degrees, according to the app.

Other parts of the country, like Texas, are also dealing with extremely cold weather.

A frigid blast of winter weather across the U.S. plunged Texas into an unusually icy emergency Monday that knocked out power for more than 2 million people, shut down grocery stores and air travel and sent cars skidding on dangerously snowy and slick roads.

The storm was part of a massive system that brought snow, sleet and freezing rain to the southern Plains and was spreading across the Ohio Valley and to the Northeast. The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities across 14 states, called for rolling outages because the supply of reserve energy had been exhausted. Some utilities said they were starting blackouts, while others urged customers to reduce power usage.

“We’re living through a really historic event going on right now,” said Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, pointing to all of Texas under a winter storm warning and the extent of the freezing temperatures.

These photos show just what the people of Texas are dealing with due to the rare dip in temperatures.

Meanwhile, in Central Florida, temperatures were in the mid-80s on Monday, though another cooldown is expected to arrive soon, but only after a few possibly stormy days. Click here for the full forecast.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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