The Worst Ice Storms in US History, Ranked
A quarter-inch of freezing rain can collapse a regional power grid for weeks. The worst US ice storms killed dozens and cost billions with barely any snow on the ground — from the 1998 Great Ice Storm that felled 1,000 transmission towers to Winter Storm Uri in 2021, the costliest US winter storm on record at $24 billion. Here they are, ranked from NOAA and National Weather Service records.
Ice storms are the quiet catastrophe of American winter. They put down little or no snow, so they never get the drama of a blizzard. But pound for pound they do more damage to the power grid than almost anything short of a hurricane — because freezing rain sticks, and the ice just keeps adding weight until trees and transmission towers give way.
Below are the worst ice storms to hit the United States, ranked by the overall scale of what they did — deaths, damage, and how many people they left in the cold and dark — followed by the meteorology that makes a warm-rain event in the middle of winter so uniquely destructive.
The Worst US Ice Storms, Ranked
No single number captures an ice storm — some were the deadliest, some the costliest, some knocked out the most power — so these are ranked by overall scale of impact, with each row's standout metric alongside. Every figure is from NOAA, the National Weather Service, or a state emergency-management/utility record.
| Ice storm | Date | Region | Deaths | Damage / peak outages | Why it made the list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter Storm Uri — the “Great Texas Freeze” | Feb 11–20, 2021 | Texas & the central/southern US | 246+ (Texas official; excess-death estimates 700+) | $24.0B — costliest US winter storm on record; ~10M without power | Not a classic freezing-rain-only event, but the modern catastrophe the old lists all miss. A days-long Arctic freeze with sleet and ice paralyzed the Texas power grid, leaving nearly 10 million people in the dark, some for days, in sub-freezing cold. NCEI rates it the costliest US winter storm ever — more than double the inflation-adjusted cost of the 1993 “Storm of the Century.” |
| The Great Ice Storm of 1998 | Jan 4–10, 1998 | Northern New England, upstate NY (and eastern Canada) | ~44 across North America (16 in the US) | $3B+ across North America; 4M+ without power, some for a month | The benchmark ice storm. Up to three inches of glaze accreted on everything from Maine to Quebec; more than 1,000 transmission towers buckled in chain-reaction collapses, and parts of the grid stayed down for weeks. The US toll fell hardest on Maine, New Hampshire and northern New York. |
| The Ohio Valley / Ozarks Ice Storm of 2009 | Jan 26–28, 2009 | Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri & the mid-South | 65 nationwide (35 in Kentucky) | 2M+ without power; 1–2"+ ice accretion | The National Weather Service offices in Paducah and Louisville both called it the worst weather event of the decade for their areas. Over 500,000 Kentucky homes lost power — 100,000 for more than a week — in the largest outage in state history. Most deaths were carbon-monoxide poisonings from generators and heaters used indoors. |
| The Carolinas Ice Storm of 2002 | Dec 4–5, 2002 | North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia | 24 (plus ~200 CO-poisoning hospitalizations) | 1.8M without power on Dec 6 | Up to an inch of freezing rain glazed the North Carolina Piedmont. It knocked out power to more customers than Hurricane Hugo had in 1989 — over half of Duke Energy’s Carolinas customers — and it took ten days to fully restore. |
| The Southern Plains Ice Storm of 2007 | Jan 11–24, 2007 | Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Texas & the Northeast | 85+ (32 in Oklahoma) | ~$380M; hundreds of thousands without power | A multi-wave event that iced the Southern Plains three separate times over two weeks. It ranks among the deadliest ice storms in US history — most of the Oklahoma deaths were on the roads, the rest hypothermia and carbon-monoxide poisoning. |
| The Mississippi Delta “Great Ice Storm” of 1994 | Feb 9–13, 1994 | N. Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana | 9+ | $3B+ (Mississippi timber alone $1.3B); ~750,000 without power | Two to five inches of ice — some of the heaviest glaze ever measured in the Deep South. It shattered roughly 3.7 million acres of commercial forest, pulled down more than 8,000 utility poles, and left parts of north Mississippi without power for up to a month. |
| The Oklahoma Ice Storm of December 2007 | Dec 8–11, 2007 | Oklahoma & Kansas | 27 | 641,000+ customers out — the worst power outage in Oklahoma history | Oklahoma’s second historic ice storm of 2007, eleven months after the January event. At its peak more than 641,000 electric customers were dark — the largest outage the state had ever recorded — as ice-laden trees and lines came down statewide. |
| The Great Ice Storm of 1951 | Jan 29 – Feb 1, 1951 | Louisiana to West Virginia (TN, MS, AL, KY) | 25 (≈500 injured) | Long ranked the costliest ice storm on record; buried Nashville under 8" of ice and snow | The historic benchmark before the modern grid era. A four-day siege of freezing rain from the Gulf Coast to Appalachia shut down transportation for days; Nashville — where it is still remembered as the “Great Blizzard” — was encased in eight inches of ice and snow. |
Death tolls blend direct and indirect fatalities (traffic, hypothermia and carbon-monoxide poisoning) as reported by NOAA, the NWS and state agencies. Damage is in nominal — year-of-event — dollars, so older storms look smaller than they hit. Winter Storm Uri is included as the modern benchmark: it was a broad Arctic winter storm rather than a pure freezing-rain event, but sleet and ice were central to the grid collapse that defines it.
1998 vs. 2021: Two Grids, Two Decades, Same Lesson
1998 — the ice that wouldn't stop falling
For five days in early January 1998, a stubborn warm layer aloft turned an ordinary storm track into a freezing-rain machine over Maine, New Hampshire, upstate New York and Quebec. Ice built to three inches on power lines and trees. When more than 1,000 high-voltage transmission towers folded under the load, the outage stopped being about downed neighborhood lines and became a regional blackout — over four million people, some without power for a month, in the dead of a northern winter.
2021 — the grid that wasn't built for it
Twenty-three years later, the failure came from the opposite direction. Winter Storm Uri drove Arctic air and sleet all the way to the Gulf Coast, into a Texas power system that had never been winterized for it. Nearly 10 million people lost power in sub-freezing cold; the Texas Department of State Health Services counted more than 200 deaths, and independent excess-mortality analyses put the toll far higher. At $24 billion it is the costliest US winter storm on record. The lesson 1998 and 2021 share: ice storms don't kill by snowfall totals — they kill by taking the power out and keeping it out.
Why Freezing Rain Is So Destructive
The difference between a harmless snow, a rattle of sleet, and a grid-killing ice storm comes down to a single layer of the atmosphere. In all three cases precipitation starts as snow high up. What happens next depends on the “warm nose” — a shallow band of above-freezing air a few thousand feet above the ground:
- Snow — no warm layer. The flakes never melt and reach the ground frozen.
- Sleet — a thin warm layer melts the snow into rain, then a deep cold layer below re-freezes it into ice pellets before it lands. Sleet bounces and piles like tiny hail; it's a nuisance, not a grid-killer.
- Freezing rain — a deep warm layer fully melts the snow, but the surface and everything on it is below 32°F. The rain stays liquid until the instant it touches a road, a branch or a power line — then it freezes on contact into a sheet of clear glaze. That is an ice storm.
Glaze is heavy and it bonds. A coating of ice sharply multiplies the weight a power line span or a tree limb must carry. Once accretion passes about a quarter to a half inch, limbs snap and lines sag; past an inch, poles and towers come down. That is why an ice storm that drops no measurable snow can still cause weeks-long blackouts across several states — and why forecasters treat a tenth-of-an-inch difference in the freezing-rain forecast as the line between a slick commute and a disaster.
Where the US Ice Belt Is — and Why 2026-27 Matters
Ice storms cluster where cold air to the north meets warm, moist air to the south and neither wins cleanly — the Mid-Atlantic, the Ohio Valley, the Tennessee Valley and the mid-South. Look at the ranked list and the geography jumps out: Kentucky, the Carolinas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas. Cold air drains south and pools at the surface while warm Gulf air rides up and over it — the exact recipe for a deep warm nose and hours of freezing rain.
That's why the coming winter is worth watching. El Niño winters historically load the southern storm track and push more moisture across the ice belt, and forecasters are calling for a strong event. Read what that could mean in our 2026-27 winter forecast, compare the snow side in the worst blizzards in US history, and see which whole seasons ranked coldest in the worst winters on record.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the worst ice storm in US history?
By power outages and cost, Winter Storm Uri — the February 2021 “Great Texas Freeze” — was the worst, leaving nearly 10 million people without electricity and costing $24 billion, the most expensive US winter storm on record. For a classic freezing-rain event, the January 1998 Great Ice Storm is the benchmark: up to three inches of glaze felled more than 1,000 transmission towers and left over 4 million people without power across the Northeast and eastern Canada, some for a month.
How much ice does it take to bring down power lines?
Surprisingly little. The National Weather Service generally treats about a quarter-inch of freezing-rain accretion as the threshold where damage begins — enough to start snapping tree limbs and sagging power lines — while a half-inch to an inch can bring down lines and poles outright. Ice is heavy and it bonds to whatever it coats, so most outages come from ice-loaded trees and limbs falling into lines. The worst historic storms deposited two to five inches of glaze.
What is the difference between an ice storm and a blizzard?
A blizzard is a snow event — heavy snow plus sustained high winds and low visibility. An ice storm is a freezing-rain event: rain that falls as liquid and then freezes on contact with sub-freezing surfaces, coating everything in glaze. Ice storms produce little or no snow but do far more damage to power grids and trees, because the ice sticks and its weight accumulates. See our companion ranking of the worst blizzards for the snow side.
Are ice storms getting worse?
The trend is regional rather than national. A warming climate is shifting some traditional snow events toward mixed rain-and-ice in the transition zone between cold air to the north and warm air to the south — the Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley and mid-South “ice belt.” El Niño winters, like the strong event forecast for 2026-27, historically raise freezing-rain risk across the southern US, where warm, moist Gulf air overrides shallow cold air at the surface.
Keep Exploring
Compare the snow catastrophes in the worst blizzards in US history, the coldest seasons in the worst winters on record, the cities that shiver most in the coldest cities in America, or browse every state's extremes in our weather records hub.
Sources & Method
Ranked by overall scale of impact (a blend of death toll, damage and peak power outages), because no single metric fairly ranks ice storms across eras. Figures are from NOAA NCEI (including its billion-dollar disasters record, which puts the February 2021 winter storm at $24.0 billion, the costliest US winter storm on file), National Weather Service event summaries (Jackson MS 1994, Paducah/Louisville 2009, Norman OK 2007, Nashville 1951), and state emergency-management and utility reports, all accessed September 22, 2026. Death and outage figures blend direct and indirect tolls as reported by those agencies; where estimates vary widely, the range is shown. Damage is in nominal dollars. Our own weather archive stores temperature, rain and snow but not freezing-rain accretion, so this ranking is built from cited sources rather than our database.