2008: Northeastern United States
Although accumulations in this storm were much less, the timing and location were crucial.
First starting on Dec 12, this storm struck New England and Upstate New York, a densely populated series of states, right when the Christmas rush season was just getting underway.
Image: Julian Colton/Wikimedia Commons
Four people were killed, and more than a million people were in the dark as ice-laden power lines snapped, and transportation was shut down as roadways and rail tracks were coated in ice and obscured by fallen branches – all this at a time when businesses were in dire need of ways to get their goods to the burgeoning holiday market.
A rapid warm-up pushed temperatures up well past the zero-degree mark, but even so, four days later there were still hundreds of thousands of power, and it took more than a week to restore full service to New Hampshire, which was the hardest-hit.
Image: Daniel Case/Wikimedia Commons
And as bad as it seemed, there was worse yet to come.
2009: Southern United States
The New England storm just a few weeks prior must have seemed like the worst that could happen, until just a few weeks later.
Several southern and midwestern states shivered in an ice storm that left 55 people dead nationwide.
Kentucky was the worst hit, with an estimated death toll of 25, along with 700,000 people without power. Even several days later, 300,000 remained in the dark, and rural areas had to wait weeks for full restoration.
Total reported outages were 1.3 million in multiple states. In Arkansas, 30,000 power poles were reported downed, while in Missouri, the number of power lines that were snapped totaled around 100 km.
Image: Amanelle/Wikimedia Commons
It has a pretty good claim at being the United States’ worst ice storm in the 21st Century, in terms of death toll.
