Days after a winter storm dropped ice and record-breaking snow, cleanup efforts were underway Thursday in several major Southern cities such as New Orleans, where crews were removing snow the same way they remove trash,

A rare frigid storm is charging through Texas and the northern Gulf Coast, blanketing New Orleans and Houston with snow, closing highways and grounding nearly all flights.

The Big Easy was blanketed with historic snowfall Tuesday — Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport received 8 inches, the most in a single storm since records were first kept in 1948, according to the National Weather Service.