Winter storm and brutal cold leave over a dozen dead and prolonged power outages

By Eric Levenson, Mary Gilbert, CNN

(CNN) — Chris Dobry walked outside his home Sunday and came face-to-face with downed trees and thick ice covering power lines in his neighborhood of Greenwood, Mississippi.

“The ice storm in Mississippi is wreaking havoc,” Dobry wrote in a Facebook post. “No power, lines down, and trees are literally breaking apart.”

He told CNN it “may take days” to get electricity back. In the meantime, he has been using his gas fireplace for heat.

Dobry’s experience provides a taste of the crippling aftermath of the massive winter storm that dumped snow and ice across the US, leaving behind over a dozen deaths and at its peak knocking out power for over a million electric customers amid bone-chilling cold.

At least 12 storm- and cold-related deaths were reported in Massachusetts, Tennessee, Kansas, New York, Texas, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi and Michigan. Multiple deaths have been attributed to hypothermia.

Ice from the storm has caused major power outages across the southern US, particularly in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Meanwhile, over 200 million people are under cold alerts for frigid temperatures that will linger for days, extending the misery into later this week. The brutal cold is setting new daily record cold temperatures in the Plains. More records are expected to fall in the South and East as the cold lasts through at least this week.

The most significant infrastructure damage was across a swath of the South, where ice made roads slick, snapped tree limbs and weighed down power lines. Northern Mississippi and Nashville, Tennessee, in particular, are looking at prolonged recovery periods due to the number of downed trees and power lines.

As of midday Monday, there were about 750,000 electric customers without power, including 250,000 in Tennessee, over 150,000 in Mississippi and over 120,000 in Louisiana.

Trees and power lines that are still standing could still snap in the coming days under the continued strain of just the ice itself. Half an inch of ice – which 12 states recorded during this storm – can add as much as 500 pounds of weight to power lines.

High winds too can push trees and power lines to their breaking point. Wind gusts up to 25 mph are possible in parts of the Southeast on Monday.

The breadth of the storm means much of the country is dealing in some way with its aftermath. Snow was on the ground for just over 56% of the Lower 48 states Monday, and at least a foot of snow fell in 18 states, stretching from New Mexico up and over to Maine.

New York City’s Central Park recorded just over 11 inches of snow, a tally of powder that brought out Olympic snowboarder Shaun White’s daredevilry.

Travel by road will be treacherous, while air travel nearly ground to a halt on Sunday. Airlines canceled more than 11,600 flights on Sunday, according to FlightAware, the highest cancellation day since Covid-19 shut down travel in March 2020. About 4,500 US flights were canceled Monday too, affecting major airports stretching from Dallas to Boston.

‘Devastating’ ice damage in Mississippi, Tennessee

The Weather Prediction Center had warned before the storm of “catastrophic ice accumulation,” and that forecast held up for parts of the South.

Repairs and restoration to electrical infrastructure in northern Mississippi will be “prolonged” due to widespread damage and unsafe conditions, Northeast Mississippi Electric Power Association (NEMEPA) CEO Keith Hayward said in a social media post.

“The damage to the trees and vegetation is devastating,” Hayward said.

Around 24,000 NEMEPA customers, more than 75% of its customers, were still without power in northern Mississippi as of midday Monday, according to PowerOutage.US. The storm has snapped poles and downed lines across the area.

Hayward said this storm was worse than Mississippi’s historic 1994 ice storm, when outages took 23 days to restore. While modern upgrades may speed repairs compared with 1994, Hayward warned that restoration won’t be quick. Crews temporarily stopped work overnight for safety.

In Tennessee, this storm marked the highest number of outages at one time in the Nashville Electric Service’s history, with a peak of 230,000, the utility said in a Monday morning update on X.

It surpasses the 200,000 outages reached during the damaging May 2020 derecho, which was one of the utility’s largest outages on record for the city.

The company said it had restored power to 60,000 customers in the Nashville metro area on Monday morning, but another 175,000 customers were still without power.

Nashville residents should be prepared to potentially go without power for up to a week, said Brent Baker, executive vice president and chief operations and innovations officer of the Nashville Electric Service.

“This is going to be a historic event,” Baker told CNN’s Isabel Rosales on Monday. “Maybe a 20- or 30-year memory for most of us as we’ll look back at this. This is going to be something that will go down in history and be significant for our customers.”

The electricity service had deployed over 300 line workers to respond to some 115 broken poles as of midday Monday.

“This will be a weeklong event at a minimum that we’re going to be working on this but we think if we make it through today’s cold weather and the trees continue to fall … we’ll start to make more progress as the days continue on,” Baker said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Nayeli Jaramillo-Plata, Ella Nilsen, Nic F. Anderson, Linda Lam, August Philips, Jason Morris, Briana Waxman and Pete Muntean contributed to this report.