Massive winter storm dumps sleet, freezing rain and snow around much of
US
[January 26, 2026]
By KATE BRUMBACK and JULIE WALKER
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 had
rescue teams and supplies 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
Freezing rain that slickened roads and brought trees and branches down
on roads and power lines were the main peril in the South. In Corinth,
Mississippi, heavy machinery manufacturer 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.
It already was Mississippi's worst ice storm since 1994 with its
biggest-ever deployment of ice-melting chemicals — 200,000 gallons
(750,000 liters) — plus salt and sand on roads, Gov. Tate Reeves said at
a news conference.
He urged people not to drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary. “Do
please reach out to friends and family," Reeves added.
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.”
Elsewhere, deep snow — over a foot (30 centimeters) in a 1,300-mile
(2,100-kilometer) swath from Arkansas to New England — halted traffic
and canceled flights.
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.
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People wait to cross the street in Times Square during a winter
storm, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
“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 12,000 flights were canceled Sunday and nearly 20,000 were 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.
___
Brumback reported from Atlanta. Walker reported from New York. Kristin
Hall and Jonathan Mattise Nashville, Philip Marcelo in New York, Ed
White in Detroit, Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia, and Mead Gruver in
Fort Collins, Colorado, contributed reporting.
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