ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. -- In the evening hours on Thursday, snow started blanketing the buildings, roads, and pastures in Elizabeth City.
Everyone from county officials to residents were keeping an eye on the snow to keep warm and stay safe. The area was forecasted to get four to six inches of snow.
"Four inches of snow I think is manageable," said Christy Saunders with the Pasquotank and Camden Counties Emergency Management.
She and her office were closely monitoring the storm. Her office has been working with several local, state and even federal agencies to make sure people are alerted and up-to-date before the snow arrived.
"I would consider a lot more than that to be bad," Saunders said, "but it can be bad for some people because we're not used to driving in snow here."
"Some winters you don't get any snow, some winters you might get a flurry or two," Robert Kelly-Goss, the Director of Group External Relations at Elizabeth City State University, said.
The city and the university saw more than a flurry on Thursday. With its roughly 1,700 students and a number of faculty, the university made sure they were taken care of.
"I've been in the area for 15 years. There have been a handful of times we've gotten a pretty good snowstorm," Kelly-Goss said. "It makes travel difficult for a couple of days."
Meanwhile, students got boxed breakfasts with cereal, fruit, milk and juice that evening. Kelly-Goss said it was to help them with expected class delays on Friday.
When it came to food, pizza may have been on some people's minds.
"Calzones are a definite and chicken wings," Brittany Jones, the co-owner of Barley Pizza, said. "People love their chicken wings."
Places such as Barley Pizza had the ovens running, and that's because the store says even in a blizzard, business tends to swell.
"Anytime there is a weather change, whether it be snow, rain, hurricane or anything like that," Jones explained, "we have a massive storm of people wanting pizza for some reason."
The snow is expected to continue through the night and into Friday.
