{"id":68658,"date":"2026-01-27T22:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=68658"},"modified":"2026-01-30T22:24:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T22:24:58","slug":"major-january-winter-storm-affects-much-of-the-southern-and-eastern-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/68658","title":{"rendered":"Major January winter storm affects much of the southern and eastern US"},"content":{"rendered":"

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5-minute GOES-19 Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 \u00b5m) 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<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East)<\/em>\u00a0Water Vapor images (above)<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0included hourly plots of surface weather type (R=rain, S=snow, ZR=freezing rain, L=drizzle, F=fog) during the 4-day period (23 January<\/strong><\/a> – 26 January 2026<\/strong><\/a>) that a major winter storm impacted much of the southern and eastern US. According to the WPC storm summary<\/strong><\/a>, 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 70 storm-related deaths resulted across the affected regions. (The 2025-2026 winter season’s first surface air temperatures in the -40s F within the Lower 48 states occurred north of this winter storm — in northern Minnesota — on 24 January<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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)<\/strong><\/em> — darker black because ice is a stronger absorber of radiation than snow at the 1.61 \u00b5m wavelength. Widespread and long-duration power outages resulted from the weight of ice build-up on power lines.<\/p>\n

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5-minute GOES-19 Near-Infrared “Snow\/Ice” (1.61 \u00b5m) images with\/without METAR sites plotted gray, from 1401-2201 UTC on 26-27 January [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>According to a Storm Total Ice Accumulation analysis (below)<\/strong><\/em>, the maximum ice accretion amount was 1.24″ just east of Oxford, Mississippi.<\/p>\n

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Storm Total Ice Accumulation, 23-26 January (courtesy Daniel Tripp, CIWRO) [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>On 26-27 January, the areas of significant ice accretion exhibited darker shades of red in GOES-19 Day Snow-Fog RGB<\/strong><\/a> images created using Geo2Grid<\/strong><\/a> (below)<\/em><\/strong> — snow cover appeared as brighter shades of red. The Day Snow-Fog RGB uses the 1.61 \u00b5m spectral band as its green component.<\/p>\n

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5-minute GOES-19 Day Snow Fog RGB images, from 1401-2201 UTC on 26-27 January [click to play MP4 animation | animated GIF<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>The darker appearance of ice accrual (from freezing rain) was first noted on this blog using VIIRS imagery over Oklahoma<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East)\u00a0Water Vapor images (above)\u00a0included 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″ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":68724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,159,45,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geo2grid","category-goes-19","category-redgreenblue-rgb-images","category-winter-weather"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68658"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68723,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68658\/revisions\/68723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}