Worst Winter Storms in US History: Blizzards, Ice Storms and Deep Freezes Ranked

Four rankings, four rules: the costliest winter storms, every Category 5 snowstorm since 1900, the worst ice storms, and the costliest deep freezes, with snowfall maps for the storms since 2009.

What was the worst winter storm in US history? By cost, the February 2021 storm and cold wave known as Winter Storm Uri: $28.8 billion in 2026 dollars and 262 deaths, more than twice the cost of any other winter storm in the billion-dollar disaster record that began in 1980. By snowfall impact, the worst is the Great Blizzard of January 1978, whose score of 39.07 on NOAA's Regional Snowfall Index is the highest of any storm rated since 1900. By deaths, no federal list reaches back before 1980, but NOAA's account of the Great Blizzard of March 1888 puts its toll at more than 400, above the 270 of the 1993 "Storm of the Century", the deadliest winter storm in the billion-dollar record. Winter storms are not one hazard but three (snow, ice and cold), so below is a separate ranking for each, plus the costliest storms overall.

How We Rank Winter Storms

No single official "worst winter storm" list exists, so each table uses one public source and states its rule: cost from Climate Central's billion-dollar disaster database (which took over the dataset from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, NCEI, in 2025; total direct losses in 2026 dollars); snowstorms from NCEI's Regional Snowfall Index; ice storms from NOAA's Storm Events Database; cold from Climate Central's freeze and cold-wave events. Figures from DisasterAWARE's own archive are labelled as alerts (issued warnings and advisories), never as measurements.

The Costliest Winter Storms in US History

Ranking rule: every Climate Central billion-dollar event of type "winter storm", 1980 to 2026, by cost in 2026 dollars.

Source: Climate Central, U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (events list read October 9, 2026). Names in bold are the common names; Climate Central uses descriptive names.

Three of the ten have come since 2021, and the most recent, in January 2026, is already the seventh costliest and the fourth deadliest winter storm in the record. It is also the deadliest disaster of 2026 so far in Climate Central's record: a storm that brought snow and ice across the central and eastern states and into the Deep South, with daily record lows from Oklahoma and Texas to Alabama, and in parts of northern Mississippi power outages that lasted more than two weeks.

The Worst Blizzards and Snowstorms: Every Category 5 Storm Since 1900

NCEI's Regional Snowfall Index scores a storm from the area it covered with snow, how deep the snow was and how many people lived under it, separately for each of six regions in the eastern two-thirds of the country. Category 5, "Extreme", is a score of 18 or more, which NCEI says about 1% of storms reach. NCEI has rated more than 500 storms back to 1900; only 26 reached Category 5 in any region. Ranking rule: each storm's highest regional score. The index measures a storm against what a region normally gets, so a Category 5 in the South can involve far less snow than one on the Northern Plains.

Ranks 11 to 26: 11. Superstorm of 1993, Mar 12–15, 1993 (Ohio Valley 24.63, Southeast 24.43, Northeast 22.12); 12. Feb 27 – Mar 3, 1927 (Southeast, 24.42); 13. Jan 5–9, 1988 (South, 22.64); 14. Nov 28 – Dec 2, 1985 (Upper Midwest, 22.18); 15. Nov 21–29, 1993 (Northern Rockies & Plains, 22.00); 16. Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011, Feb 1–4, 2011 (Ohio Valley, 21.99); 17. Jan 19–26, 1943 (Northern Rockies & Plains, 21.14); 18. Dec 19–24, 1929 (South, 21.13); 19. Apr 15–19, 1920 (Northern Rockies & Plains, 20.84); 20. Feb 28 – Mar 6, 1966 (Northern Rockies & Plains, 20.38); 21. Dec 22–29, 2009 (Northern Rockies & Plains, 19.62); 22. Feb 19–24, 1971 (South, 19.36); 23. Knickerbocker Storm, Jan 26–30, 1922 (Southeast, 18.53); 24. Blizzard of 1978, Feb 4–8, 1978 (Northeast, 18.42); 25. Jan 21–24, 1940 (Southeast, 18.14); 26. Chicago Blizzard of 1967, Jan 25–29, 1967 (Ohio Valley, 18.13).

Source: NOAA NCEI Regional Snowfall Index, RSI and Societal Impacts tables for all six regions (read October 9, 2026). Storms rated Category 5 in more than one region are listed once. RSI uses 2000 Census population for every storm, so old and new storms are scored on the same population.

A few storms stand out:

• The 1993 Superstorm is the only storm rated Category 5 in three regions at once, and the 1996 blizzard the only other one in two. Ranked by its highest single-region score, it comes 11th. NCEI's description says it hit more than 100 million people, buried Mount Le Conte in the Smokies under 5 feet of snow, and set Syracuse's 24-hour record of 35.4 inches.
• The Great Appalachian Storm of 1950 dropped 62 inches at Coburn Creek, West Virginia, brought a 108 mph gust to Newark, New Jersey, and 3°F to Atlanta, according to NCEI.
• The Knickerbocker Storm of 1922 dumped the heaviest snowfall in Washington, D.C.'s history, 24 to 38 inches across the area. The roof of the Knickerbocker Theater collapsed under it and killed about 100 people.
• The March 2026 High Plains to Great Lakes blizzard is the newest Category 5. It was the first Category 5 in any region since the Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011, and its 26.97 is the highest regional score since the Oct 31 – Nov 4, 1991 storm in the Upper Midwest. The Weather Prediction Center's final storm summary listed preliminary totals of 36.0 inches at Herman, Michigan, and 34.0 inches at Mountain, Wisconsin, with gusts to 69 mph at Grand Marais, Michigan.

Before 1900. The RSI starts in 1900, so it does not rate the two great blizzards of 1888. On March 12–14, 1888, the Great Blizzard buried the Northeast under as much as 58 inches of snow, with drifts over 50 feet, and more than 400 people died, according to NOAA's Physical Sciences Laboratory. Two months earlier, on January 12, 1888, the "Children's Blizzard" swept the northern Plains, with temperatures falling as low as -40°F; the National Weather Service's heritage project puts its toll at between 250 and 500.

For the biggest snowstorms on record in New York, Boston, Chicago and Buffalo, with the measured city totals, see our city snowstorm records.

The Worst Ice Storms in US History

Ranking rule: NOAA Storm Events Database entries coded "Ice Storm", 1996–2025, joined into storms (an entry begins within 24 hours of the previous one), ranked by the property and crop damage reported to NOAA, in dollars of the year. We found 420 such storms; the top 10 are the same if entries are joined at 36 hours.

Source: NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database, detail files for 1996–2025 (versions of March–August 2026). States listed where reported damage was $10 million or more. Deaths are those recorded in the ice-storm entries (direct and indirect).

Reported damage understates the true cost. The January 1998 ice storm in the Northeast shows $362 million in Storm Events but $2.9 billion (2026 dollars) in Climate Central's total-cost record. The costliest ice storm of all predates the Storm Events coding: the Southeast Ice Storm of February 8–13, 1994, at $6.8 billion, fourth among all winter storms in the cost table above. Ice was also a large part of the January 2026 storm (NWS offices issued 16 ice storm warnings across 10 states, from Texas to the Carolinas, according to NWS warnings (IEM); see below), but NOAA's 2026 Storm Events file is still preliminary, so 2026 is not ranked here yet.

The Worst Deep Freezes and Cold Waves

Ranking rule: every Climate Central event classed as a freeze or with "Cold Wave" in its name (20 events, 1980–2026), by cost in 2026 dollars.

Source: Climate Central billion-dollar disasters (read October 9, 2026).

Two kinds of cold do the damage. Cold waves kill people and burst pipes: the December 1983 cold wave killed 151 and the January 1985 cold wave 150. Crop freezes cost billions with no deaths at all: the California freezes of 1990 and 1998 (citrus, avocados, fruit and vegetables in the San Joaquin Valley) and the Florida citrus freezes. The newest, Florida's freeze of late January into early February 2026, cost $3.2 billion, particularly to citrus, according to Climate Central, which notes that the first week of February ranked among the three coldest such weeks on record on the Florida Peninsula.

From 1888 to Uri to Elliott: What Changed

The 1888 blizzard shut down transport and wrecked boats, and NOAA notes that it helped push New York to build its subway and put power and telegraph lines underground. Uri, 133 years later, was a story of systems failing.

Uri, February 2021. Much of Texas stayed below freezing until February 20. The joint report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) found that more than 4.5 million people in Texas lost power, some for as long as four days, and called the episode the largest firm load shed event in US history (23,418 MW). Over two consecutive days, ERCOT averaged 34,000 MW of generation outages, nearly half of its winter peak. Texas's Department of State Health Services counted 246 deaths in the state; Climate Central's national total is 262.

Elliott, December 2022. A historic winter storm and a powerful Arctic front brought rain, snow, ice and high winds, and temperatures plummeted. More than a million customers, from Texas to Maine, lost power (Climate Central). The FERC–NERC inquiry found 90,500 MW of generating units out at the same time at the storm's worst point. Grid operators in the Southeast shed more than 5,400 MW of firm load, the largest controlled firm load shed in the history of the Eastern Interconnection. In Buffalo, a blizzard with gusts of up to 79 mph (NWS Buffalo) killed at least 47 people in Erie and Niagara counties.

January 2026. The most recent entry in the top 10 is also the deadliest winter storm since Uri: 171 deaths (Climate Central), with snow, ice and record cold affecting 24 states.

Map: Snowfall, Category 5 Regions and Ice Storms

The map shows NOAA NOHRSC snowfall analyses for seven storms since 2009, one at a time (switch in the layer menu). Each is the sum of the 24-hour snowfall grids over the storm's dates, so it also shows Western mountain snow from other systems. Click a coloured RSI region to list its Category 5 storms since 1900. Teal dots are the top 10 ice storms, placed at the damage-weighted centre of the hardest-hit states; an optional layer shows a selection of 17 DisasterAWARE alert records. Off when the map opens, the menu adds NWS winter storm, blizzard and ice storm warnings for the nine storms in the warnings table (2014–2026), NWS snow reports for the seven snowfall storms (2009–2026), ice-accretion reports for ice storms #1, #2, #7 and #10 and January 2026 (none on file for 1998–2003), Uri radar, 1993 Superstorm satellite imagery and Uri's Texas grid figures.

Open map full screen ↗

What the map can show, by era. Since late 2008, NOHRSC has published a gridded national snowfall analysis every day, so storms from 2009 on get a snowfall map built from that analysis. Earlier storms have RSI scores by region but no gridded snowfall layer here, so they appear through the region outlines. Ice storms are reported by forecast zone and county, not as measured swaths, so they appear as one marker per storm.

Warnings for the Biggest Storms Since 2014

DisasterAWARE's historical hazard archive holds 3,074 US winter-storm records and 1,009 US extreme-temperature records (pulled October 9, 2026). They are alerts (warnings, watches and advisories), not measurements. From 2014 to 2024, the archive holds between 33 and 185 US winter-storm records a year, mostly one regional alert per storm. From 2025, it holds many more, finer-grained alerts, often one per forecast area: 844 in 2025 and 989 so far in 2026. Here is every storm since 2014 that NOAA rated Category 4 or 5 in any region, plus Uri and the January 2026 storm (both Category 3), with the NWS warnings issued for each:

Counts: NWS winter storm, blizzard and ice storm warnings for the lower 48 states and DC that took effect within the storm's dates, one per NWS office warning. Source: NWS warnings (Iowa Environmental Mesonet VTEC archive), queried October 9, 2026; RSI ratings from NOAA NCEI.

The March 2026 blizzard, warning by warning. NWS offices across the Upper Midwest issued winter storm watches for the blizzard from the afternoon of March 12 (19:20 UTC), and the first blizzard warning followed on March 13 (NWS Aberdeen, South Dakota). From March 14 to 16, 16 blizzard warnings took effect across parts of eight states, from Montana and Nebraska to Illinois and Michigan, alongside 18 winter storm warnings (NWS warnings, IEM). In DisasterAWARE's archive, the regional winter storm watch record for the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains covered an alert area holding 11.7 million people. That is the population inside the alert area, not the number of people affected, so we do not rank storms by it.

For Insurers and Reinsurers: What Uri Changed

Reinsurers class winter storm as a secondary peril: Swiss Re Institute lists "secondary perils, such as winter storms, hail, floods or wildfires". Uri showed how large one can get, in four ways.

• The size of the loss. The Texas Department of Insurance's data call (data as of December 31, 2021) counted 508,529 claims and an estimated ultimate insured loss of $11.2 billion in Texas alone, of which insurers expected about $3.4 billion (30%) to be covered by reinsurance. TDI's own comparison puts Uri at $11.15 billion against $19.74 billion for Hurricane Harvey at the same 10-month stage. A winter storm produced more than half Harvey's insured loss.
• Where it came from: pipes, not snow. TDI lists the causes as freezing pipes, falling tree limbs, the weight of ice, sleet and snow, and power outages. About 85% of claims were on homes. Commercial property, other than business interruption, carried $4.57 billion of case-incurred losses on 44,201 claims, and 7,159 business interruption claims added $818 million. Losses depended on how long the cold lasted and the power stayed off, not on how much snow fell.
• The grid as the hazard multiplier. FERC and NERC traced the outages to generating units and gas supply that failed in the cold. The Texas Comptroller cites estimates of $80 billion to $130 billion in financial losses across the state, far beyond the insured total. Elliott, 22 months later, showed that the same failure could happen in the Eastern Interconnection.
• Frequency. Three of the ten costliest winter storms (Uri, Elliott and January 2026) have come since 2021.

What event-level data exists. For a winter portfolio, the useful record is footprint and duration: where the snow, ice and cold were, for how long, and which alerts were in force. NOAA publishes the RSI (back to 1900), NOHRSC snowfall grids (since late 2008) and Storm Events entries (since 1996). DisasterAWARE's archive adds its own alert records, each with its area and exposed population. Historical Event Intelligence licenses that archive across every hazard for back-testing, accumulation studies and event sets. The sample datasets show the record format with no signup.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the worst winter storm in US history? By cost, the February 10–19, 2021 storm and cold wave known as Winter Storm Uri: $28.8 billion in 2026 dollars and 262 deaths, according to Climate Central's billion-dollar disaster record. By snowfall impact, the Great Blizzard of January 1978, with the highest score (39.07) on NOAA's Regional Snowfall Index since 1900.

What was the deadliest winter storm in US history? No federal database ranks winter-storm deaths before 1980. NOAA's account of the Great Blizzard of March 12–14, 1888 puts its toll at more than 400. Since 1980, in Climate Central's record, the deadliest winter storm is the March 1993 "Storm of the Century", with 270 deaths, just ahead of Uri (262).

What was the worst blizzard in US history? On NOAA's Regional Snowfall Index, the Great Blizzard of January 23–28, 1978 (the "Cleveland Superbomb") scores highest, at 39.07 in the Upper Midwest. The 1993 Superstorm is the only storm rated Category 5 in three regions at once.

What was the worst ice storm in US history? By total cost, the Southeast Ice Storm of February 8–13, 1994: $6.8 billion in 2026 dollars (Climate Central). Since 1996, the ice storm with the most damage reported to NOAA is that of January 26–28, 2009, in Arkansas, Kentucky and Missouri ($1.16 billion reported).

How much did Winter Storm Uri cost? $28.8 billion in 2026 dollars ($22.7 billion at the time) in total direct losses (Climate Central). Insured losses in Texas alone were estimated at $11.2 billion on 508,529 claims (Texas Department of Insurance).

Related Reading

• Biggest Snowstorms in NYC, Boston, Chicago and Buffalo History
• El Niño 2026–27: Strength, Forecasts and Winter Outlook
• Why Secondary Perils Are Changing Insurance Risk
• Live Winter Storm Alerts and City Rankings
• Winter Storm Risk in Dallas, TX
• Winter Storm Risk in Chicago, IL

Sources: Climate Central billion-dollar disasters; NOAA NCEI Regional Snowfall Index and Storm Events Database; NOAA NOHRSC National Snowfall Analysis; NOAA Weather Prediction Center; NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory; NWS Heritage; FERC–NERC reports on February 2021 and Winter Storm Elliott; Texas Department of State Health Services; Texas Department of Insurance; Texas Comptroller; NWS Buffalo; Swiss Re Institute; NWS warnings (Iowa Environmental Mesonet VTEC archive); DisasterAWARE Historical Hazards API (queried 2026-10-09).