January 2007 North American ice storm
It resulted in at least 74 deaths across 12 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces, and caused hundreds of thousands of residents across the U.S. and Canada to lose electric power.
Before the storm, most of North America experienced very mild conditions through the first week and a half of January, with several record-breaking warm temperatures across most of the Midwest and Eastern U.S. and Canada.
On January 8, a cold front, which was responsible for a major blizzard across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, sagged across most of the continent, bringing with it much colder temperatures.
A second winter storm developed in Texas and brought another round of heavy wintry precipitation from Arizona into the Great Lakes region.
The large storm also affected the Midwest and some of the mid-Atlantic states before moving into the Atlantic Ocean and hitting Newfoundland and Labrador on January 24 before heading towards the Arctic region.
[6] In Oklahoma, in addition to major tree damage, about 40,000 customers lost power after the first wave of freezing rain on January 12.
One of the hardest hit areas was the city of McAlester in the eastern part of the state in Pittsburg County where most of the town was without power for several days.
A large section of Interstate 10 near the San Antonio area had to be shut down on the 16th because of snow and ice covering the highway.
[24] On January 21, a Northwest Airlines plane linking Milwaukee to Detroit via Flight 1726 slipped off a snow-filled runway after a mechanical failure during the storm.
No injuries were reported in the incident, which took place shortly after takeoff from General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee.
[25] The New Orleans Hornets (who played in Oklahoma City at the time) and Milwaukee Bucks game was postponed due to the ice storm in Wisconsin.
Ontario Provincial Police reported nearly 500 traffic accidents in the region, including one involving a tractor trailer carrying liquid oxygen that slid on its side after a collision in the interchange of Highways 400 and 407.
Heavy snows and mixed precipitation in Atlantic Canada and eastern Quebec caused by a weather bomb disrupted travel on the 19th.
The Confederation Bridge linking New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island had to be shut down to truck traffic for several hours due to strong winds and mixed precipitation.
[29] At least 87 people were killed, most of them in traffic accidents, by the series of winter storms; fourteen in Missouri, eight in Iowa, twelve in Texas, two in Minnesota, four in New York, one in Maine, one in Indiana, four in Michigan, three in Arkansas, one in Quebec, one in Ontario, one in Nova Scotia, two in North Carolina, three in Kansas, four in Nebraska and twenty-six in Oklahoma.
[32][36][37] Heavy amounts of ice were also reported across portions of Lower Michigan, in southern Ontario from Windsor to Toronto and in New York and New Hampshire.
Heavy snows fell in parts of Nebraska and Colorado on the 13th and 14th, with more eastern areas such as Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick being on the 15th and 16th.
Between 4 and 10 inches (10–25 cm) of snow fell across the central and southern Plains from the 19th to the 21st as the result of another large winter storm.
Places such as Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona also received a rare light snowfall on the 21st while a foot of snow was reported in the mountains in the northern part of the state.
