Heavy snow falls in the US Carolinas, as iguanas fall from trees in Florida during icy weather

Snow piles cover the footpath as a person crosses the street in Midtown Manhattan in New York City today. Extreme cold continued in New York, with the ninth straight day of below freezing temperatures. Photo / Kena Betancur, AFP

Iguanas stunned by cold temperatures dropped from trees in usually balmy Florida today as icy conditions blasted southern American states, dumping nearly half a metre of snow in some areas and whipping up high winds that caused traffic chaos.

The heaviest snows in the United States were reported in North Carolina - a state that rarely sees snow other than in its highest elevations.

The city of Lexington saw 40cm c and Faust in the state’s Walnut Mountains got 56cm.

State Governor Josh Stein reported 1000 road collisions and two fatalities yesterday and today and urged people to stay off the roads. He also advised citizens to be aware of the symptoms of frostbite.

The latest bout of extreme weather came about a week after a monster storm pummelled a wide swathe of the US, killing more than 100 people and leaving many communities struggling to dig out from snow and ice.

While Florida did not see snow like the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and the southern part of Virginia, it saw record low temperatures, with the mercury touching -4C in Orlando, the lowest recorded in February since at least 1923. Typically, at this time of year, the temperature ranges between daily lows of 12C and highs of 23C.

Florida’s WPLG 10 TV network, based in Miami, reported that it was “raining iguanas” as the cold-blooded reptiles fall from trees when the temperature gets too low.

Videos posted on social media showed the stunned creatures on footpaths after falling from trees in southern parts of the state.

Jessica Kilgore, who runs a service called Iguana Solutions that removes invasive species, told WPLG 10, she has collected many of the lizards, both alive and dead, during the cold snap.

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission issued an executive order, seen by AFP, allowing people to transport iguanas - which run wild in the state but can’t be owned without a permit - to commission offices.

The National Weather Service predicted that heavy snows would taper off in the Carolinas today but forecast high winds to spread up the east coast of the US as an intense cyclone “slides out to sea”.

Stein said that the highway running through North Carolina’s Outer Banks - a sliver of land filled with beach homes that juts out from the Atlantic coast - saw over wash from the ocean due to heavy winds and high tides and could take a while to reopen.

The weekend storm forced more than 800 flight cancellations at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, a major hub for American Airlines, data from the tracker FlightAware showed.

About 158,000 customers remained without power, mostly in the south, according to poweroutage.us, with Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida and Louisiana hardest hit.

-Agence France-Presse