A major winter storm slammed the US Gulf Coast Tuesday, blanketing parts of a region largely unaccustomed to extreme winter weather with record-breaking snowfall.

Part of a legal description of a boundary line of Dixie County, for instance, says it goes "southerly down the thread of the main stream of said Suwannee River to the Gulf of Mexico; thence along said Gulf of Mexico, including the waters of said gulf within the jurisdiction of the State of Florida, to the mouth of the Steinhatchee River."

A major winter storm that slammed Texas and the northern Gulf Coast is spreading heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain across parts of the Florida panhandle and eastern Carolinas