This post is excerpted from the INDY’s morning newsletter, Primer. To read this morning’s edition in full, click here. To get all the day’s local and national headlines and insights delivered straight to your inbox, sign up here.


It’s just begun snowing at my house in Durham, but the forecasters seem pretty damn sure as much as five inches is coming. As I wrote yesterday, don’t freak out. Everything will be fine. [INDY] Even so, last night Governor Cooper took the preemptive step of declaring a state of emergency, and most school districts in the Triangle and Sandhills announced they’d be closed, as will all the big universities and the zoo. [N&O]

  • From the N&O, here’s what’s en route: “The National Weather Service is now predicting that the Triangle will get 4 to 6 inches of snow Wednesday, although the precipitation at 5 a.m. was limited to light drizzle that was changing to snow in Orange and Durham counties. Behind a very slim area of light rain at the eastern edge of the storm front moving through North Carolina, though, it was snowing over the western half of the state.”
  • “Snow should be falling over most of the Triangle by 7 a.m. [fact check: it began snowing at my place at 7:50]. The snow will rapidly intensify after that. The heaviest snow in the Triangle is expected between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Snowfall rates of half an inch to an inch per hour will be possible. Occasional but brief bursts of even heavier snow may occur, making road conditions dangerous very quickly. … It will get colder as the day goes on. Forecasters predict readings of 26 to 28 degrees throughout the region by 5 p.m. Wednesday. Lows overnight are expected to be in the teens, with wind chill readings approaching single digits across central North Carolina. Thursday’s high is predicted to be only in the mid-30s.”

WHAT IT MEANS: We’ll be getting a fair amount of snow today, sure, but temperatures the rest of the week are such that it won’t stick around long. So get out and enjoy yourself. Or stay inside and chill. Just be careful and have fun. The world will return to normal soon enough.