A severe winter storm brought crippling ice to the South and heavy snow to the Northeast, killing more than 110 people and leaving nearly half a million homes and businesses without power or heat as of Tuesday, January 26. More than 130,000 customers remained without power in Mississippi, while more than 110,000 were without electricity in the Nashville, Tennessee, area and about 90,000 more in Louisiana, according to power outage tracking data.
With temperatures forecast to fall well below freezing in the hardest-hit areas and recovery expected to take a week or more, residents faced mounting dangers from the cold. Southern homes are typically not built to withstand Northern winters, leaving many communities without adequate heat, power, or water as utilities worked to restore service.
The death toll climbs
More than 110 people have died across the storm’s path, with causes including car crashes, hypothermia, and collisions with snowplows. In Louisiana alone, at least 8 deaths were reported. Several people were found dead outdoors in New York City.
One of the most tragic incidents occurred in Texas, where three brothers—ages 6, 8, and 9—died Monday after falling through the frozen surface of a pond.
The scale of power loss
The power outages stretched across an expansive region. More than 110,000 customers remained without electricity in Nashville as of Tuesday, 175,000 across all of Tennessee, and 137,000 in Mississippi. Louisiana had 91,000 without power.
Adrian Ronca-Hohn, a 23-year-old football coach in Iuka, Mississippi, said he awoke Monday to what looked “like a war zone.” He described a sleepless night listening to falling trees and branches crashing down around his home.
“We couldn’t go 10 seconds without hearing what sounded like a gunshot,” Ronca-Hohn said. “We have a lot of people without heat, without power and without water. We have a lot of mobile homes down here that aren’t very well-insulated.”
The ice accumulation
Ice thickness reached 1 inch across multiple communities in Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Alabama, and South Carolina. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Clinton National Airport recorded 6.7 inches of sleet. Sterling, Massachusetts, received 22.2 inches of snow.
Marshall Ramsey of Oxford, Mississippi, lost power during the ice storm. On Monday morning, the temperature inside his home had dropped to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. He described the weekend’s conditions as “like a demonic symphony of trees breaking, transformers blowing and thunder.”
The recovery challenge
Restoring power is expected to take days, even weeks, in the hardest-hit areas. Allen County, Kentucky, estimated that full power restoration could take up to 10 days.
Nashville city officials identified 47 warming centers where residents without power could go to warm up, including fire and police stations. However, temperatures were forecast to fall further, with Nashville expecting a low of 14 degrees Fahrenheit Wednesday morning and Orlando, Florida, expected to reach 28 degrees. The National Weather Service warned of what could become “the longest duration of cold in several decades” for the region.
The aviation industry felt immediate effects, with 2,000 U.S. flights canceled on Tuesday alone. One notable rescue operation occurred in the Tupelo, Mississippi, area, where the nonprofit Paws of War—a New York-based organization that rescues animals and places them with veterans and first responders—saved more than 200 dogs from a rural property just before the ice storm struck.
Southern homes and infrastructure are typically not designed for the severe winter conditions that struck the region, compounding the challenges residents faced. Many communities lack adequate insulation and heating systems for the extreme cold that accompanied the storm.