Extreme Winter Storm Slams North America: Deadly Impacts, Widespread Power Outages, and Disrupted Travel

A massive winter storm swept across North America from January 23 to 25, burying much of the United States in heavy snow, ice, and bitter cold. According to NASA's Earth Observatory, the storm dumped a wide band of snow from the Southwest to New England, creating treacherous travel, toppling power lines, and forcing widespread school closures. Wikipedia details that this expansive event, dubbed the January 2026 North American winter storm, stretched nearly two thousand miles from the Mexico-United States border into Canada, prompting twenty-four U.S. state governors to issue emergency declarations and activating National Guardsmen from twelve states.

The storm proved deadly and disruptive, with fifty fatalities confirmed by January 26, primarily from hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, and accidents. In Louisiana, eight people died, including five from hypothermia and cases linked to power outages in Caddo and DeSoto Parishes; Governor Jeff Landry toured the damage by helicopter on January 27. Mississippi reported two deaths, one from a tree falling on a mobile home in Iuka, with nearly three hundred thousand customers losing power from crippling ice. North Carolina saw over four hundred traffic accidents and a hypothermia death in Buncombe County, while South Carolina had two cold-related fatalities. Tennessee recorded two deaths and over four hundred forty crashes by January 26.

Power outages peaked at over one million customers, concentrated in Texas, Louisiana, the Mississippi Delta, and the southern Ohio River basin, as noted by ABC News and Convoy of Hope. Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of emergency on January 21, suspending services like DoorDash in Amarillo and Lubbock. In the Midwest, Indiana Governor Mike Braun issued a statewide disaster declaration amid one to four inches of snow escalating to twelve to eighteen inches in southern areas; Missouri, Kansas, and Ohio followed with emergencies and National Guard activations.

Flight cancellations soared, with over nine thousand on January 25 alone, grounding operations at LaGuardia and Reagan National Airports. New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared an emergency, canceling early voting and closing state parks in New Jersey.

This storm highlights emerging patterns of intensified winter extremes, with record snowfall from Texas to Maine breaking daily records in southern areas and the highest number of counties under winter storm warnings ever recorded. Such events underscore the growing risks from compound weather impacts, straining infrastructure and response systems across the nation's interior and East.

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