On Friday, January 23, 2026, a powerful winter storm began sweeping across North America. Throughout the following weekend, the system brought impactful winter from Texas to Maine, leaving a large swath of snow and ice in its wake. The storm caused significantly travel disruptions across a large portion of the South, Midwest, and Northeast, as well as knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of households.

Winter storm warnings stretched over thousands of miles across the United States, from the Southwest to the Northeast. Heavy snow was dumped along the storms path, with many locations receiving at least several inches, while some saw over a foot of snow.

Frigidly cold Arctic air swept in with the storm, causing temperatures and wind chills to drop well below 0 °F (-18 °C) in the Northern US and in Canada. Over the Great lakes region, the cold temperatures saw a significant increase in ice coverage across the five lakes, with the shallow Lake Erie becoming over 90% covered in ice.

Worse weather however came in the Southern US, where the atmosphere was just warm enough to producing freezing rain instead of snow, leading to ice accumulations of over an inch thick in some areas. Mississippi was particularly hit hard by the ice storm, bringing down trees and knocking out power to thousands across the state. This combined with the Arctic blast of cold temperatures created life-threatening conditions in the Deep South.

Right before the month came to a close, on January 31, another winter storm tracked up the East Coast. This rapidly-intensifying storm, at the time referred to as a bomb cyclone, delivered strong winds and several inches of heavy snow from the Southeast US to the Mid-Atlantic states. In North Carolina, this storm caused a massive multi-car pileup on Interstate-85. The Arctic air brought by this storm plunged so far south, that Florida saw temperatures dip below freezing, with snow flurries even reported to have been witnessed in the state’s peninsula.

For more forecast information and updates on these systems, visit the National Weather Service. For information on Great Lakes ice coverage, visit the NOAA Coastwatch website.

A detailed post-event satellite analysis highlighting GOES and VIIRS imagery from this historic storm is available on the Satellite Liaison Blog.