A massive winter storm dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow across much of the U.S. on Sunday, bringing subzero temperatures and halting air and road traffic. Tree branches and power lines snapped under the weight of ice, and hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the Southeast were left without electricity.
The ice and snowfall were expected to continue into Monday followed by very low temperatures which could cause “dangerous travel and infrastructure impacts” for days, the National Weather Service said.
Heavy snow was falling from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while “catastrophic ice accumulation” threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
“It is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,” weather service meteorologist Allison Santorelli said in a phone interview. “It was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we’re talking like a 2,000-mile spread.”
President Donald Trump approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned rescue teams and commodities in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
In New York, communities near the Canadian border saw record-breaking subzero temperatures, with Watertown registering minus 34 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 37 degrees Celsius) and Copenhagen minus 49 F (minus 45 C), Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
Coping with the storm
In Corinth, Mississippi, Caterpillar told employees at its remanufacturing site to stay home Monday and Tuesday.
“May God have mercy on Corinth, MS! … The sound of the trees snapping, exploding & falling through the night have been unnerving to say the least,” resident Kathy Ragan wrote on Facebook.
In Clarksdale, Mississippi, Sanford Johnson said enough snow and sleet fell that few motorists ventured out.
“I had to break it to my youngest daughter that the play date she scheduled likely won’t happen today. We have no plans on driving,” Johnson said.
In Nashville, Tennessee, Jami Joe, 41, feared her electricity might not last as ice-heavy limbs from oak and pecan trees continued to crash around her house. “It’s only a matter of time if a limb strikes a power line,” she said.
Because of icy roads, Josh Martin figured he and his wife, Misti, were “locked in” for a while at their home on a steep hill in Columbia, Tennessee.
“Getting in and out of the neighborhood is not an option,” Martin said. “I can get down because gravity will take me, but I could not get back up.”
On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, January Cotrel enjoyed the fresh snow on a block that always closes during snowstorms for residents to sled, throw snowballs and make snowmen.
“I pray for two feet every time we get a snowstorm. I want as much as we can get,” she said. “Let the city just shut down for a day and it’s beautiful, and then we can get back to life.”
Storm knocks out power and snarls flights
As of Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, Santorelli said. Hundreds of thousands of customers were without power according to poweroutage.us, with Tennessee and Mississippi hit especially hard.
Some 11,500 flights were canceled Sunday and more than 16,000 delayed, according to the flight tracker flightaware.com. Airports in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, North Carolina, New York and New Jersey were among those impacted.
Bitter cold makes things worse
The danger will continue after the ice and snow, Santorelli warned.
“Behind the storm it’s just going to get bitterly cold across basically the entirety of the eastern two-thirds of the nation, east of the Rockies,” she said. That means ice and snow won’t melt as fast, which could hinder efforts to restore power.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people who died were found outside as temperatures plunged Saturday, though the cause of their deaths remained under investigation. He urged people to stay inside and off the roads: “We want every single New Yorker to make it through this storm.”
Two men died of hypothermia related to the storm in Caddo Parish in Louisiana, according to the state health department.
Across the affected areas, schools and universities announced that classes would be canceled or held remotely Monday.
Recovery could take time
In Oxford, Mississippi, police appealed for residents to stay home. Utility crews were also pulled from their jobs during the overnight hours.
“Due to life-threatening conditions, Oxford Utilities has made the difficult decision to pull our crews off the road for the night,” the utility company posted on Facebook early Sunday. “Trees are actively snapping and falling around our linemen while they are in the bucket trucks.”
Oxford city officials posted dramatic photos on social media of slick roads and ice-coated trees sagging or breaking under the added weight.
In Tennessee, emergency officials urged motorists to give crews space to treat roads as drivers have been crashing into them.
Icy roads also made travel dangerous in north Georgia, where the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office posted on Facebook, “You know it’s bad when Waffle House is closed!!!” along with a photo of a shuttered restaurant. Whether the chain’s restaurants are open — known as the Waffle House Index — has become an informal way to gauge the severity of weather disasters across the South.