Parts of the southern U.S. have seen major impacts from a long duration ice storm that began on Monday, January 30 and lasted through Thursday, February 2. Several rounds of freezing rain, sleet, snow, and isolated thunderstorms rolled through the region, with the heaviest ice accumulations from central Texas through Arkansas and into western Tennessee. Widespread rainfall totals of 1-3″ were also common from eastern Texas through northern Alabama. Though temperatures across parts of the region were at or below freezing for much of the storm, warm air aloft led to most of the precipitation falling as freezing rain or sleet instead of snow.
Freezing rain accumulations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were around a quarter of an inch, with sleet accumulations up to an inch also reported in the metropolitan area. Thundersleet was even reported in Dallas on Tuesday morning. The highest freezing rain accumulations were generally reported around Austin and areas to the west, where up to 0.75” fell. Officials urged residents to avoid travel across parts of Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas as ice coated roadways and led to hundreds of crashes, spinouts, and pileups.
Image Courtesy Arkansas DOT
Thousands of flights were canceled across the region from Monday through Thursday, with a good deal of those cancellations at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Texas were also without power for parts of the week. At least eleven deaths have been blamed on the storm, including eight in Texas. A handful of sleet and freezing rain accumulations are listed below.
Sleet:
Ponotoc, OK: 2”
Mountain Home, AR: 1.8”
Greers Ferry, AR: 1.5”
Shady Shores, TX: 1.3”
Oakland, TN: 1”
Freezing Rain:
Llano, TX: 0.8”
Fischer, TX: 0.75”
Bartlett, TN: 0.67”
Burnet, TX: 0.53”
Pine Ridge, AR: 0.5”
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