Winter Storm Fern

Event Summary | Summary
Posting Date: January 27, 2026, 1:00:00 PM

A winter storm dubbed “Fern” brought a spectrum of hazards – snow, ice, wind, even a tornado – to more than two-thirds of the states in the U.S. over the past four days.

Snowfall from the storm was prodigious and wide ranging.  The highest totals were generally in the upper Midwest and New England states – Boston saw its 9^th snowiest storm on record with 23.2 inches. Philadelphia (9.3 inches) and Baltimore (11.3 inches), the highest total for both cities in a decade.  For Pittsburgh (11.2 inches), it was the highest storm total since 2010. Toronto saw 22 inches, breaking a city record that had stood for almost 82 years. While accumulating snow did dip as far south as Dallas (2.4 inches), parts of the deep south were instead impacted by severe thunderstorms spawned by the colliding warm and arctic air masses, leading to three dozen official reports of thunderstorm wind impacts and a tornado touchdown near Geneva, Alabama.

Freezing rain accumulations and ice damage were reported from Texas in a swath through the southeast creeping up into New England. Parts of northern Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana saw ice accumulations of one inch, while 80 other locations across the south reported accumulations of more than one half inch. At the storm’s peak, more than one million customers were without power, per poweroutage.us.  As of midday Tuesday, that number remained at about 560,000, virtually all in the southeast. Significant losses are expected to continue to accumulate in these areas, where power outages due to freezing rain will make it challenging to heat buildings during the cold weather. Many of these areas rely primarily on electric heat, so frozen/burst pipes are likely to occur if power is not restored quickly.

Early speculation from industry publications suggest that Fern could well drive a billion-dollar loss but appears unlikely to approach the impacts of Uri in 2021.  Verisk meteorologists and engineers will be monitoring and studying the impacts of this storm over the next several days, but given the current situation, no additional ALERT postings are currently scheduled for this event. Please contact your Verisk representative with any questions.

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Posting Date: January 27, 2026, 1:00:00 PM

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