Winter Storm Fern killed 119 across North America despite days of warnings

The generator outside the modest brick house on Nashville’s east side rattled and coughed in the freezing air, a thin orange extension cord snaking through a cracked window to a space heater in the living room. After an ice storm snapped power lines across the city, the family inside had spent two nights in the dark, wrapping their children in coats and blankets as the temperature inside dipped into the 40s.

On the third day, as freezing rain still ticked against the roof, a letter arrived from their homeowners association: Stop running the generator or face fines.

The clash between a neighborhood rule book and a basic effort to stay warm captured one of the defining tensions of the late‑January storm system that spread snow, ice and Arctic cold from northern Mexico to Atlantic Canada. The storm was widely forecast and extensively warned about. Yet it still killed at least 119 people, knocked out power to more than 1 million customers at its peak and left communities across the South struggling to survive in homes, neighborhoods and grids built for milder winters.

Over five days from Jan. 22 to Jan. 26, the sprawling system — popularly dubbed Winter Storm Fern — blanketed states from Texas to Maine in snow, glazed the Deep South in ice, shattered snowfall records in Toronto, and pushed subfreezing temperatures to the Gulf Coast and into northern Mexico. At the height of the storm, federal forecasters said roughly 300 million people were under some form of winter storm, ice or cold advisory, and more than half of the contiguous United States was covered in snow.

The toll, which officials say could still rise as investigations continue, makes the storm one of the deadliest winter weather events in North America in recent years.

A predictable but punishing storm

Meteorologists had been tracking the system since a cold‑core low formed over the Pacific Ocean near Baja California on Jan. 22. A disturbance in the upper atmosphere stretched the polar vortex, dislodging frigid Arctic air southward over central and eastern North America just as Pacific and Gulf of Mexico moisture streamed in.

By Jan. 23, sleet and freezing rain were already falling across parts of northern Texas, southern Oklahoma and Arkansas. The following day, the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center issued its first formal storm summary, warning of “dangerous to impossible” travel conditions and widespread power outages in a broad corridor from the southern Plains to New England.

On Jan. 25, as the storm’s main low moved east, a secondary coastal low formed off the Southeast in a classic “Miller B” pattern and rapidly intensified into a nor’easter. Heavy, wind‑driven snow pounded the Mid‑Atlantic and New England, while the back edge of the storm continued to lay down ice from Mississippi to Kentucky.

“It was a historic, widespread, long‑lasting winter storm,” the Weather Channel said in a national broadcast, describing “catastrophic ice accumulations in the South … leading to widespread power outages and tree damage.”

Deaths in cars, alleys and unheated homes

By the time skies cleared, authorities across at least two dozen U.S. states and several Canadian provinces had linked deaths to the storm and the cold that followed.

New York reported 15 storm‑related deaths, including several people found outdoors in New York City during subfreezing weather. Mississippi officials confirmed 14 deaths and described the event as the state’s worst winter storm since a paralyzing 1994 ice storm. Tennessee reported 13 deaths, many clustered around Nashville, where freezing rain coated trees and power lines in thick ice.

Kentucky reported 12 deaths; Texas 11; Indiana and Louisiana nine each. Maine counted six deaths and one person missing. Other states reported smaller numbers from traffic crashes, falls and exposure.

Causes were as varied as they were grim. Police and medical examiners cited hypothermia among unsheltered people and elderly residents in darkened homes, carbon monoxide poisoning from generators and grills used indoors, sledding and all‑terrain vehicle accidents, multi‑vehicle crashes on icy highways, and people struck by snowplows. Several deaths were tied to cardiac events while shoveling heavy snow.

In Canada, authorities in Montreal said two women died of cold after losing power in their homes. In total, at least 119 deaths across the United States and Canada had been confirmed or suspected as storm‑related by Jan. 30, with one additional person missing.

Millions in the dark

The storm’s most widespread damage came not from record snowfall but from ice.

In a belt stretching from northern Mississippi through Tennessee and into parts of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley, freezing rain accreted in layers up to three‑quarters of an inch thick. Tree branches snapped under the weight, dragging down distribution lines and transformers by the thousands.

Nationwide, utilities reported about 135,000 customers without power by the afternoon of Jan. 24. That number swelled to nearly 700,000 the next morning and topped 1 million by midday Jan. 25, according to aggregated outage data. By the following day, around 700,000 customers were still in the dark.

Tennessee was among the hardest‑hit states. Nashville Electric Service, the city’s main utility, said more than 230,000 customers — almost half its service territory — lost power during the height of the storm, a record for the utility. Some neighborhoods, particularly in older and heavily treed parts of the city, remained out for six days or longer as crews slowly replaced snapped poles and restring wires in subfreezing conditions.

Mayor Freddie O’Connell praised line workers but criticized the utility’s communication, saying NES needed to “do better at explaining its recovery efforts” and giving neighborhoods realistic restoration timelines.

In neighboring Mississippi, roughly 300,000 customers lost power at one point, leaving communities from Jackson northward without heat for days. Louisiana officials reported that more than 50,000 customers were still out days after the ice stopped falling. Gov. Jeff Landry surveyed damage by helicopter and warned residents that some repairs would take time, particularly in rural areas.

A tale of two grids

In Texas, the storm revived memories of February 2021, when a brutal cold snap and power grid failures left millions without electricity for days and contributed to hundreds of deaths. This time, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, kept the bulk power system online despite frigid temperatures and high demand.

State and grid officials said that since 2021, power plants had been weatherized, more transmission lines had been hardened, and new batteries and market rules had been put in place to keep more generators available. Outages in Texas were largely caused by local distribution damage from ice and falling trees, rather than by a collapse of the statewide grid.

Still, at least 11 deaths in Texas were linked to the storm, including traffic crashes, sledding accidents and children falling through ice on ponds. Dallas‑Fort Worth International Airport recorded just under an inch of snow on Jan. 25 — enough to set a daily record and disrupt hundreds of flights.

The contrast with cities designed for heavy snow was striking. Boston’s Logan Airport recorded 23.2 inches of snow, the city’s eighth‑largest snowstorm on record. Toronto’s Pearson International Airport logged 46 centimeters, its largest single‑day snowfall since record‑keeping began there in 1937, with some neighborhoods seeing around 60 centimeters thanks to a stalled lake‑enhanced band.

Both cities closed schools and saw hundreds of flight cancellations. But longstanding snow plans, fleets of plows and buildings insulated for harsh winters allowed them to dig out relatively quickly, even as southern cities grappled with smaller totals that proved far more damaging.

A three‑country emergency

The storm’s reach extended into Mexico, where the National Meteorological Service issued winter weather alerts for parts of Tamaulipas, Chihuahua and Durango. Snow fell in the mountains of Chihuahua and Durango, wind gusts reached 72 kilometers per hour, and temperatures dropped to around minus 4 degrees Celsius in some border areas. Authorities closed roads and suspended classes in parts of Tamaulipas as the Arctic air mass plunged south.

In the United States, at least 24 governors, along with the mayor of Washington, D.C., declared states of emergency or activated emergency operations centers. Some states imposed temporary travel bans on trucks, closed parks and state offices, and mobilized National Guard units to assist with rescues and welfare checks.

At the federal level, the Federal Emergency Management Agency pre‑positioned supplies and crews. The agency staged roughly 250,000 meals, 400,000 liters of water and several dozen generators at a logistics hub in Louisiana and put urban search‑and‑rescue teams on standby.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump approved 12 federal emergency disaster declarations — including for Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia — to “help state‑led efforts of turning power back on, clearing roads for emergency services, and keeping communities safe.”

Billions in damage, uneven recovery

The economic fallout was immediate and broad. Airlines canceled more than 20,000 flights from Jan. 23 to Jan. 26, with more than 9,000 cancellations reported on Sunday, Jan. 25 alone — the worst single day for flight disruptions in the United States since March 30, 2020, during the early COVID‑19 pandemic.

Amtrak canceled or truncated dozens of trains. Interstates from Louisiana’s I‑20 to North Carolina’s I‑26 and I‑85 were closed or severely restricted as jackknifed trucks and wrecked cars blocked lanes.

AccuWeather estimated that the storm would cost the U.S. economy between $105 billion and $115 billion in property damage, lost wages, business closures, supply chain delays and other indirect impacts. In the energy sector, natural gas prices at the Henry Hub benchmark more than doubled as cold weather and production slowdowns in some Texas basins squeezed supply.

Behind the numbers, emergency officials and advocates noted that the burden of the storm fell unevenly.

Many of those who died or suffered the most extended outages were people without stable housing, elderly residents living alone and patients dependent on electric medical devices. In cities like Nashville and Jackson, Miss., low‑income neighborhoods reported days without power or heat, even as wealthier residents were able to decamp to hotels or rely on whole‑house generators.

Local governments opened warming centers, but transportation and awareness remained obstacles. In some places, drivers were stranded for hours or days on frozen highways, unable to reach shelter as fuel and cellphone batteries dwindled.

The next test

Scientists are still studying how a warming Arctic and changes in the polar vortex may influence the kind of continent‑spanning winter storms that have hit North America in recent years. Researchers caution that individual events are shaped by many factors, but the January storm adds to a series of severe cold snaps, ice storms and nor’easters that have tested infrastructure from Texas to Atlantic Canada.

For now, emergency managers and utilities are taking stock. The storm showed that major investments in power plant weatherization and grid rules in places like Texas can reduce the risk of catastrophic blackouts. It also underscored that local distribution systems — the poles and wires that thread through neighborhoods — remain vulnerable to ice and trees, especially in regions unaccustomed to heavy winter weather.

In Nashville, the family with the generator eventually worked out a compromise with their homeowners association, according to local reports: They could keep the machine running as long as they followed safety rules and limited overnight noise.

Across the continent, similar adjustments are likely to play out in boardrooms, utility control centers and city councils as officials weigh whether building codes, neighborhood covenants and emergency plans designed for a milder past are enough for a more volatile winter future. The storm that everyone saw coming left behind more than broken branches and bent guardrails. It exposed, in outages and obituaries, who is left in the cold when the power fails and the rule books do not bend.