What Makes This Weekend’s Blizzard So Brutal

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TThis weekend, more than half of the United States, or at least 170 million people, are bracing for a winter storm that will stretch 2,000 miles. On the northern front of the system, from Oklahoma to Massachusetts, people could face up to a foot of snow, more than some places have seen in years. And in the South, cities could encounter layers of ice more than an inch thick. (You can learn more about your local impacts here.)

This massive storm, called Fern, could prove particularly risky due to a front of frigid Arctic air that will bear down on most of the country over the next week, possibly bringing subzero temperatures. This could allow snow and ice to persist – for those without power, this could quickly become dangerous.

Climate change is a key ingredient in the perfect storm that will arrive this weekend. Arctic air now tends to dip further south due to the weakening of the polar jet stream, a fast-moving river of air located in the lower atmosphere where frigid polar air and warm mid-latitude air meet. This change is thought to come from rapid warming in the Arctic: as the temperature difference between the Arctic and mid-latitudes decreases, the movement of the jet stream becomes slower and more unstable.

Some scientists believe this has made intense winter storms more likely in mid-latitudes, including Europe, the United States and parts of Asia, at the southern edge of polar air vortices.

Read more: “They came for climate science. Then the storms came.”

But a team recently challenged that theory, pointing out that the polar jet stream has exhibited irregular patterns for more than a century. In fact, it appears that it acted even more chaotically before climate change could have a significant impact.

That said, other factors related to intensifying climate change are likely also at play. For example, a warmer atmosphere retains more moisture, which results in more intense storms. “I’m not saying that any particular weather event is attributed to climate change,” Judah Cohen, a climate scientist at MIT, told CNN. “But I think it stacked the dice here.”

Although this weekend’s storm is expected to be brutal, it likely won’t compare to the record-breaking winter disaster known as the Great Blizzard of 1888, also known as the “Great White Hurricane.” On March 11, 1888, it struck the northeastern United States, where about a quarter of Americans lived at the time.

The storm dropped up to 55 inches of snow in some areas and New York City experienced wind gusts of 85 miles per hour. There, some 15,000 people were stranded on elevated trains, and many remained stuck inside, including Mark Twain, who was then holed up in a hotel. And on the Atlantic coast, hundreds of boats sank amid violent winds and waves. Ultimately, more than 400 people died in the blizzard, about half of them in New York.

The disaster forced cities to adjust their infrastructure, including underground water, telegraph and gas pipes. And Boston and New York began work on the nation’s first underground subway systems over the next decade.

Today, these cities will be among the hardest hit by the coming storm, which will strain infrastructure added more than a century ago to allow residents to move around amid a whiteout.

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Main image: iSweet / Shutterstock

• Molly Glick

  Published on January 23, 2026

  Molly Glick is the newsletter editor of Nautilus.