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Major January winter storm affects much of the southern and eastern US

By Scott Bachmeier •

5-minute GOES-19 Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) imagery with hourly plots of surface weather type (red), from 0601 UTC on 23 January to 0001 UTC on 27 January [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) Water Vapor images (above) included hourly plots of surface weather type (R=rain, S=snow, ZR=freezing rain, L=drizzle, F=fog) during the 4-day period (23 January – 26 January 2026) that a major winter storm impacted much of the southern and eastern US. According to the WPC storm summary, some notable storm statistics included: 23″ of snowfall in Pennsylvania, 6.7″ of sleet accumulation in Arkansas and 1.0″ of freezing rain accretion in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina. Over 60 storm-related deaths have resulted across the affected regions.

During the day on 26-27 January, as cloud cover cleared in the wake of the departing storm, areas that received significant ice accrual (from freezing rain and/or sleet) showed up as swaths of darker black in GOES-19 Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” imagery (below) — darker black because ice is a stronger absorber of radiation than snow at the 1.61 µm wavelength. Widespread and long-duration power outages resulted from the weight of ice build-up on power lines.

5-minute GOES-19 Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm) images with/without METAR sites plotted gray, from 1401-2201 UTC on 26-27 January [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

The area of ice accretion exhibited darker shades of red in GOES-19 Day Snow-Fog RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) on 26-27 January (snow cover appeared as brighter shades of red). The Day Snow-Fog RGB uses the 1.61 µm spectral band as its green component.

5-minute GOES-19 Day Snow Fog RGB images, from 1401-2201 UTC on 26-27 January [click to play MP4 animation | animated GIF]

According to a Storm Total Ice Accumulation analysis (below), the maximum ice accretion amount was 1.24″ just east of Oxford, Mississippi.

Storm Total Ice Accumulation, 23-26 January (courtesy Daniel Tripp, CIWRO) [click to enlarge]

The darker appearance of ice accrual (from freezing rain) was first noted on this blog using VIIRS imagery over Oklahoma.

Categories: Geo2Grid, GOES-19, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Winter weather