Eastern North Carolina was blanketed in snow all the way to the coast by a winter storm on Saturday, and fierce winds generated high surf that toppled another beachfront house on the Outer Banks Sunday morning.
Preliminary reports from the National Weather Service showed Tabor City, in Columbus County, got 16 inches. Fairmont, in Robeson County, saw 12.7 inches while nearby Lumberton got 10.7 inches.
Along the coast, Ocean Isle Beach reported depths of 12 inches and 15 inches, while Wrightsville Beach got 6 inches and Surf City and Morehead City reported 10 inches. Bogue Inlet Pier at Emerald Isle reported 5 inches of snow, Minnesott Beach on the Neuse River got 17 inches.
The storm was the result of the meeting of two major weather systems: cold air coming from north and west, and moisture from a low-pressure system that developed over the Atlantic.
The coastal component brought tropical storm-force winds that generated excessive surf and caused flooding along N.C. Highway 12 on the Outer Banks, forcing closure of the road in places.
Around 7:30 a.m. Sunday — about an hour past high tide — the ocean finally brought down a house it had been battering for months. The house, named “Rejuvenate” by its owners in Iowa, had been the site of many gatherings in the neighborhood off Lighthouse Road.
Lat Williams, who with his wife, Debby, had their house moved off the oceanfront late last year to keep it from falling, said there were four houses on the waterfront still at risk of falling Saturday night as he went to bed. Sixteen houses fell into the ocean in Buxton in 2025 when erosion accelerated along the beachfront.
Around midnight, Williams said, the wind picked up, howling at about 50 mph. Sunday morning, the beating continued. When his neighbors’ house fell, Williams made the call to Rejuvenate’s owners.
“The first thing she said was, ‘Did it go down?’” Williams said. “I said, ‘Yeah,’ and she said there’s a little bit of grief and relief there. You’ve been on pins and needles for six months, and now you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Williams walked the beach after the collapse looking for anything he might save for his friends, but said, “It’s all just wreckage.”
Morehead City doesn’t have plows
Sammy Boyd’s hometown of Morehead City doesn’t have a fleet of plows, so his waterfront restaurant, Southern Salt, closed down like nearly every other business on Saturday to give the big winter storm time to pass.
“We don’t have the infrastructure like some places do,” said Boyd, who cleared the restaurant parking lot in the afternoon just to make things easier later. While he was out, he said, he saw a few pieces of equipment on the road, “with a little plate attached to the middle kind of kicking the snow to the side.”
Along the coast, snow was falling Saturday from Emerald Isle, Beaufort and Morehead City in Carteret County north to the Outer Banks.
Around 2:15 p.m., the city of New Bern posted photos on Facebook of near-whiteout conditions and said, “Roads are getting bad.”
On Ocracoke and Hatteras islands, where winds of up to 60 mph were possible with the storm, ferry service was suspended and drivers had been warned about possible overwash on N.C. 12, especially at high tide.
On Emerald Isle, the webcam at Bogue Inlet Pier showed snow covering the beach and the wooden planks of the pier, which is closed for the season. Even surfers appeared to be taking the afternoon off.
Boyd, 55, whose speech is seasoned with the Carolina Brogue, remembers big snowfalls at the coast in 1979 and 1989. As of Saturday afternoon, this storm didn’t compare to those in terms of snowfall , but he figured there were 5 or 6 inches on the ground and it was still coming.
Until Friday, Boyd was in the Bahamas. He might have stayed, he said, but the forecast called for cooler temperatures there, too, for the next few days.
He considered hopping farther south to Costa Rica, but said, “I had to get back to my dog.”
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