In the capital, Mayor John Horhn additionally declared the city to be in a state of emergency on Friday morning, urging folks to prepare for the storm.
"We urge people to take this storm seriously," he said during a press conference at city hall. "It could be a life and death situation, and it's better to be forewarned, forearmed and prepared in the event that the storm gets as bad as we think it may: or even worse."
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has a list of warming shelters open for folks. The state Department of Transportation additionally has updated maps to monitor traffic as ice rolls in over the weekend.
In Jackson, the mayor said that JXN Water was prepared for freezing weather, with vulnerabilities only from power outages.
"While we are working on a reliability project for power, that work is not complete, and we remain vulnerable to power loss, causing disruptions to water service," said Horhn, reading from a JXN Water statement. "Our crews will be on standby and ready to respond throughout the winter storm."
The city's transit system will also be suspended or run on a limited schedule over the next few days due to icy road conditions.
Other officials gave briefings on what to expect over the next few days of freezing rain, ice and sleet. Entergy Mississippi's president and CEO, Haley Fisackerly, said that their biggest concern will be outages that occur, especially with the accumulation of freezing rain in the central part of the state.
"We are amassing over 1,600 restoration workers to be into the area," he said. "We serve from Memphis down to South DeSoto County into this area, so we are strategically positioning these crews to work."
Meteorologist Michael Hill with the National Weather Service said that Jackson and surrounding areas won't see ice as early as northern parts of the state, but that by Saturday night, the storm will have arrived.
"We expect that to last almost all day on Sunday, and then we will have clearing conditions for Monday," Hill said. "However, the cold will come in behind the front Sunday into Monday: and we're talking dangerously cold temperatures for our area."
"We won't get above freezing until at least Tuesday, perhaps even Wednesday."
Up north, Washington County emergency management characterized the Delta's weather as coming in two waves, starting with rain Friday night and then sleet and freezing rain into Saturday morning, and another wave on Sunday.
Despite the changes in forecasts, deputy director Sarah Hester said Washington's forecast hasn't differed from predictions earlier in the week.
"They've been pretty consistent with our area, I guess because we've been dead in the middle of just all of the ice," Hester told MPB.
And, she says the forecasts she's seen are shaping up to be rough for the north.
"They have percentages on [forecast maps] of what they're expecting that they say themselves they've never seen before," Hester said. "I believe it was an inch of ice: I think we're in the fifties and they said the fact that there's even a number on this board is saying a lot because there really shouldn't even be a number."
"We were in the nineties in the quarter of an inch and we were in the seventies in half an inch...we've been consistently with some bad news."
Further south, around Meridian, Lauderdale County emergency management director Odie Barrett said they've had to keep up with changing predictions.
"Starting off, we were right there in a level two, and then it shifted a little bit; we were then put in a level one, and now it has shifted more north of us," he said. "We're really not in a threat of the winter storm, but we are right in the middle of the freezing temperatures."
Although the south part of the state is unlikely to see major impacts from the storm, Holly Bilbo, director of emergency management in Hancock County, said they're expecting extreme cold and are opening their cold weather shelter.
"We're gonna have that open Sunday night through Wednesday night; we'll open it from 8 PM to 8 AM," Bilbo said. "We're really just monitoring conditions right now and the forecast. Hopefully everything keeps us out of the icy conditions, but if something changes we're ready."
Right now, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is coordinating at the national level and has its National Response Coordination Center and Regional Response Coordination Centers ready in the region.
“Additionally, the agency deployed Incident Management Assistance Teams to support the states of Louisiana, Texas and the Commonwealth of Virginia and have 12 additional teams ready to deploy if requested by the states," Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem wrote in a statement. "Twenty-eight FEMA Urban Search and Rescue teams are on standby, prepared to deploy at the request of governors."
The agency is also setting up staging sites in Louisiana, Kentucky and Texas with food, water and generators.
