Mid-March storm lashes U.S. with blizzards, ice, tornadoes and record heat

Snowbanks swallowed the first-floor windows on Main Street, and the wind still screamed around the corners long after the blizzard warnings expired. In Mountain, Wisconsin, residents dug out from drifts approaching 3 feet high, while hundreds of miles away along Lake Michigan, ice-laden trees leaned into power lines that had already gone dark.

On the same day, air conditioners hummed in Los Angeles and Phoenix as temperatures pushed toward triple digits, even though the calendar still said March. In Nebraska, crews fought what officials called the largest wildfire in state history, driven by dry grass and the same fierce winds twisting across the Plains.

All of it unfolded under the influence of a single sprawling storm system that, over five days in mid-March, turned much of the continent into a patchwork of hazards.

From March 13 to 17, a powerful low-pressure system that formed over the eastern Pacific and swept across the Rockies unleashed blizzard conditions in the Upper Midwest and High Plains, a damaging ice storm around the Great Lakes and a multi-state tornado outbreak in the South and East. At the same time, the broader weather pattern helped fuel record-early heat in the Southwest, heavy rain and landslides in Hawaii, and fire weather on the central Plains.

The National Weather Service estimated that more than 100 million people experienced some form of severe weather as the system moved east. Forecast firm AccuWeather said more than 200 million were under some sort of dangerous weather threat at one point — more than half the U.S. population.

“This is technically still winter,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said as her city prepared for an unusual March heat wave. “This is not normal for March. It’s a sign of how climate change is impacting our city.”

A storm with many faces

Meteorologists describe the mid-March system as a classic but unusually far-reaching “Colorado low” — a storm that develops east of the Rocky Mountains and then intensifies as it taps warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and cold, dense air spilling south from Canada.

An atmospheric river had slammed into the Pacific Northwest on March 13, priming the region with moisture. As that energy crossed the Rockies and entered the Plains, the storm strengthened quickly, drawing a sharp dividing line between winter and spring across the central United States.

On its cold western and northern side, the storm wrapped in Arctic air and produced heavy, wind-driven snow from eastern Montana and Wyoming into the Dakotas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. By March 16, the system’s central pressure had fallen to around 983 millibars as it moved into the Great Lakes, strong enough to maintain blizzard conditions over a broad swath of the Upper Midwest.

Near Round Lake in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, unofficial reports measured as much as 52 inches of snow. Mountain, Wisconsin, saw close to 3 feet. Wind gusts reached 69 mph near Grand Marais along Lake Superior, tossing snow into powdery whiteouts that brought interstates to a standstill.

State transportation departments closed long stretches of I-94, I-35 and other major highways because of zero visibility and jackknifed trucks. In Minnesota and the Dakotas, some closures lasted overnight as authorities warned drivers that rescue might be impossible until conditions improved.

Air travel ground to a halt. On March 16 alone, airlines canceled more than 4,700 flights across the country, with hundreds of cancellations and delays at hubs in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Chicago and Detroit. Thousands more flights were disrupted earlier in the storm, as snow and crosswinds rippled through schedules from Seattle to New York.

Governors in several states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, declared states of emergency. National Guard units helped clear roads and conduct welfare checks, and local officials opened warming centers for residents whose homes were without power or heat.

Ice and outages in Michigan

Along the narrow zone where cold and warm air collided, precipitation fell as freezing rain instead of snow — coating roads, trees and utility lines in a clear glaze that was particularly destructive in northern Michigan.

In parts of the northern Lower Peninsula and the eastern Upper Peninsula, residents woke to branches bowed under the weight of ice and the sound of limbs snapping in nearby woods. While an official measurement in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, showed about a third of an inch of ice, local reports from Michigan indicated pockets of heavier accumulation around communities such as Petoskey, Cheboygan and in Delta County.

By the morning of March 16, more than 2.5% of electric customers in Michigan were without power, according to outage trackers. Consumers Energy alone reported more than 90,000 customers in the dark at one point. Some residents lost service for several days as crews navigated blocked rural roads and dangerous conditions to restring lines.

“We’re one of only a few houses on our road that still have power,” one northern Michigan resident wrote in a widely shared social media post as neighbors fired up generators and sought shelter with friends or at emergency warming sites.

The storm came barely a year after a widely described “historic” March 2025 ice storm left tens of thousands in the state without power for weeks. The repeated events have intensified scrutiny on Michigan’s largest utilities, Consumers Energy and DTE Energy, and on the state’s oversight of grid resilience.

The Michigan Public Service Commission has begun tying a portion of utility revenues more closely to reliability performance, including how quickly companies restore power after major storms. Regulators and utility executives are debating how much to invest in tree trimming, pole replacement and undergrounding of lines in vulnerable corridors, especially in heavily forested northern counties where access is difficult.

Tornadoes in a stormy March

South of the snow and ice, the same storm system pulled warm, humid air off the Gulf of Mexico and set the stage for a multi-day severe weather outbreak.

The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center issued an enhanced risk outlook for severe thunderstorms on March 15 from the lower Mississippi Valley north into Illinois and Indiana, and again over parts of Alabama and Georgia. Forecasters warned of a fast-moving squall line with damaging winds, embedded supercells and the potential for tornadoes.

By nightfall, reports of tornadoes stretched from Arkansas and Missouri into Kentucky and Illinois. Survey teams later confirmed at least 49 tornadoes over the life of the storm, nearly all rated EF0 or EF1 on the Enhanced Fujita scale. An EF1 tornado near Caneyville, Kentucky, packed estimated winds of 110 mph and damaged homes and trees along its path. In Arkansas, straight-line winds near Minturn toppled power poles at 77 mph and an EF1 tornado damaged mobile homes and outbuildings along Interstate 57.

On March 16, the severe threat shifted east. The Storm Prediction Center upgraded parts of northern South Carolina, North Carolina and southern Maryland to a moderate risk — the second-highest category — focusing on the danger of tornadoes and destructive winds as a squall line raced toward the Atlantic.

Sirens sounded from Georgia to Virginia. Tornado warnings popped up along the Interstate 95 corridor, and heavy rain and gusts knocked down trees and cut power to tens of thousands more customers.

While no tornadoes stronger than EF1 have been confirmed from this event so far, the outbreak capped an unusually active stretch. Earlier in March, separate outbreaks from March 5 to 7 and March 10 to 12 produced stronger storms, including an EF3 tornado near Union City, Michigan, that killed three people.

For many communities, the March 13–17 system marked the third time in as many weeks that residents sought shelter from rotating storms.

“We’ve had sirens going off every few days,” said one emergency manager in Kentucky. “Even lower-end tornadoes can be devastating when they hit mobile home parks or small towns that don’t have a lot of resources.”

A country under multiple alerts

As snow fell in the north and thunderstorms rolled east, much of the rest of the country faced its own weather emergencies.

In California and the Desert Southwest, a dome of high pressure allowed temperatures to soar. Parts of the Los Angeles area and Phoenix reported readings near or above 100 degrees, conditions more typical of late spring or summer than mid-March. City officials urged residents to check on older neighbors and to be mindful of energy use, even as they pointed to the episode as another indication of a changing climate.

On the central Plains, strong winds and dry vegetation created ideal conditions for fire. In Nebraska, Gov. Jim Pillen said crews were battling “the largest wildfire in our state’s history” as flames raced over ranchland and into sparsely populated areas. “Mother Nature is throwing a doozy at us,” he said.

Heavy rain pounded parts of Hawaii, triggering landslides and flooding and forcing closures of several major roads. On the East Coast, the storm’s approach prompted federal agencies in Washington, D.C., to send workers home early on March 16. The House and Senate postponed planned votes as officials eyed forecasts of severe storms and high winds in the nation’s capital.

Scientists say it is difficult to attribute any single storm entirely to climate change. But they note that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, increasing the potential for intense precipitation — including heavy snow where temperatures remain below freezing — while raising the odds of record-breaking heat waves.

Some researchers also point to emerging evidence that a warming Arctic may be linked to a more sinuous jet stream, allowing deep troughs of cold air and strong storms to coexist alongside unusually warm ridges, particularly in the shoulder seasons of late fall and early spring. Others caution that those connections are still being studied.

What is clear is that overlapping extremes are becoming more visible. The 2025–26 winter season has already delivered multiple high-impact storms, including a late February blizzard in the Northeast that rated as a major event on the National Weather Service’s Regional Snowfall Index. Preliminary tallies suggest hundreds of winter-related deaths and billions of dollars in damage nationwide, even before final numbers are compiled.

As the March storm complex spun away into the Labrador Sea — deepening over the North Atlantic to a central pressure comparable to a strong hurricane before finally weakening near Greenland — communities in its path began the slow work of recovery.

In Wisconsin and Michigan, loaders hauled away snow that had been pushed into towering roadside piles. In rural Arkansas and Illinois, farmers assessed damaged barns and downed fences. In northern Michigan, lineworkers replaced broken poles along narrow, muddy tracks while residents restocked refrigerators and reconsidered whether to invest in backup generators.

For most people, the storm will be remembered in simple, local terms: the night the lights went out again, the day the road disappeared, the afternoon the sirens wailed. But for emergency planners, utility regulators and climate scientists, it offered something else — a vivid, five-day snapshot of how a single weather system, in a warming world, can test the limits of infrastructure and preparedness from coast to coast.