The January 2018 North American blizzard caused widespread severe disruption and blizzard conditions across much of the East Coasts of the United States and Canada in early January 2018. The storm dropped up to of snow in the Mid-Atlantic states, New England, and Atlantic Canada, while areas as far south as southern Georgia and far northern Florida had brief wintry precipitation, with 0.1 inches of snow measured officially in Tallahassee, Florida. The storm originated on January 3 as an area of low pressure off the coast of the Southeast. Moving swiftly to the northeast, the storm explosively deepened while moving parallel to the Eastern Seaboard, causing significant snowfall accumulations. The storm received various unofficial names, such as Winter Storm Grayson, Blizzard of 2018 and Storm Brody. The storm was also dubbed a "historic bomb cyclone". On January 3, blizzard warnings were issued for a large swath of the coast, ranging from Norfolk, Virginia all the way up to Maine. Several states, including North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts declared states of emergency due to the powerful storm. Hundreds of flights were canceled ahead of the blizzard. Overall, 22 people were confirmed to have been killed due to the storm, and at least 300,000 residents in the United States lost power in total. Meteorological history Early on January 1, the Weather Prediction Center (WPC) began to anticipate the possibility of a northward-tracking area of low pressure that would bring wintry precipitation to much of the East Coast of the United States in the first week of January, exacerbating an extended period of anomalously cold weather. Due to modeling confining of precipitation to relatively narrow bands at the time, initial forecasts on the storm's impacts were uncertain. The storm's development was forecast to originate from the eastward progression of a shortwave trough originating from the northern Rocky Mountains, strengthening due to the presence of a longwave trough situated over the Eastern United States. However, as the anticipated event drew closer, the system's genesis grew increasingly complex with the development of two separate disturbances in the jet stream over the upper Mississippi Valley and the eastern extent of the Rocky Mountains; these two would shape the eventual coverage of wintry precipitation associated with the storm. As the troughs pushed eastward, frontogenesis along the trough and a resulting increase in moisture allowed for freezing rain to commence over areas of northern Florida