[4][5] As the people of Little Tall Island, Maine prepare for a powerful blizzard in 1989, elderly resident Martha Clarendon is brutally murdered by a menacing stranger.

Linoge seems to know the names and morbid secrets of all the island's residents, and is particularly interested in Mike's son Ralphie, who has a birthmark on his nose.

The residents have the same dream in which authorities find the island deserted after the storm and the word "Croaton" carved on a tree.

When the meeting gathers, Linoge tells the residents that he has lived thousands of years and, having grown old, and sick, he wants a child whom he can raise to be a sorcerer like him.

In an epilogue, Mike divorces Molly, leaves Little Tall and severs ties with the people he once swore to protect and those he once called friends; he moves to California and enrolls to graduate school, completing his education honestly, and joins the United States Marshals Service in San Francisco after he earned his degree in Criminal Justice.

Having lost her family, a thoroughly depressed Molly eventually gets remarried to Alton "Hatch" Hatcher, Mike's deputy constable whose wife died over a year later after a heart failure from benzodiazepine overdose.

Several other residents succumb to their guilt to Mike's family and commit suicide (including Robbie Beals' wife Sandra and Angie's husband Jack) over the course of nine years.

Mike considers telling Molly what he saw but ultimately decides it's better to stay quiet (knowing that it would only open old wounds) and move on.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Chilling performances and an even darker moral dilemma shelter Storm of the Century's somewhat long-winded tale from ever being anything less than watchable.

"[7] Director Mike Flanagan has cited Storm of the Century as a major influence on his 2021 Netflix miniseries Midnight Mass.