The most disruptive winter storms are not always the ones with the biggest snowdrifts. The forecast maps for this massive storm system, which stretches 2,300 miles across 35 states, keep drawing the eye back to a more subdued, but more serious, threat: ice that locks roads, weighs down trees, and taxes the power grid long after the snowplows have passed.
Over 200 million people have been placed under winter storm watches as the storm extends from the Southern Rockies into New England. The National Weather Service has termed it a long-duration event that will bring “widespread heavy snow, sleet, and freezing rain” and warned that “widespread travel disruptions, prolonged power outages, and extensive tree damage is likely.” In the main snowfall area, areas of Kentucky and Virginia are expected to come close to two feet of snow, while the major metropolitan areas of New York City and Boston are expected to receive 12-18 inches.
Ice has altered the mood of the forecast.
In the South, the amount of freezing rain has been shown on maps as being dangerous even if it appears small compared to the amount of snow. The weather service has issued a warning that “catastrophic impacts are expected where freezing rain amounts exceed a half inch,” with amounts of over one inch possible in northern Louisiana, central and northern Mississippi, southern Tennessee, and the southern Appalachians. This is important because ice not only slows down travel, it also weighs more. The warning in the main article is the one that utilities and line crews fear the most: ice is more likely to bring down power lines than snow.
As this glaze builds, the simple patterns are disrupted in a manner that snow, by itself, may not. On the ground in the eastern two-thirds of the U.S., close to a million customers in the South were left powerless at one point as the system came into effect, with the states of Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas being some of the worst affected. Air travel was also disrupted, with over 11,000 flights canceled and in excess of 4,700 flights delayed in the U.S. at one Sunday evening count. This is the kind of cascade failure that ice storms are experts at, where downed limbs close side streets, clogged roads feature stranded cars on main streets, and repair work takes longer as workers are unable to access the area.
Nicholas Price, an NWS meteorologist in Texas, explained the dangers of such occurrences: “Whenever we see these big ice events, we’ll see various hazards; obviously bridges and overpasses being frozen over, and with trees and various different things that could fall into the roadways or potentially fall on houses.” Even if the totals remain below the worst-case scenario in a given county, the situation can be the same, particularly on the higher roadways that tend to freeze first and thaw last. But the cold air in the wake of the storm can mean yesterday’s slush becomes tomorrow’s skating rink.
More than 43 million people have been placed under an extreme cold warning, as wind chills are expected to be below 5°F in some spots, according to the accounting in the primary article. This makes the cleanup process a second event, as the melting of ice during the day can refreeze in a short period of time after sunset. Houston emergency management director Brian Mason explained this issue of timing: “Tonight, it is going to get very, very cold, so any moisture that’s left out there it is going to refreeze,” and “When the sun goes down, please make sure you’re off the roads and take the burden off our first responders that will be out in the field.”
Even the human body is incorporated into the infrastructure narrative when the wind chills get this low. In Northeast Ohio, emergency physician Jeremiah Escajeda at MetroHealth said frostbite can quickly develop in children and adults: “Thirty minutes or less typically is all the time that’s required to develop frostbite in exposed individuals when the windchill is near zero.” The maps of the storm indicate where the bands are; the cold that follows is why the affected areas tend to feel the effects for days.
