Over 200,000 Virginia utility customers were without power as light revealed broken trees and a crystalline landscape on Thursday morning following the most widespread and destructive ice storm in many years, possibly dating back three decades.
The vast majority of the damage was through the heart of Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside coverage area, stretching from Bland, Wythe and Grayson counties on the west side eastward across the Blue Ridge and Roanoke and New River valleys through the Southside and Piedmont counties east of the Blue Ridge and into Central Virginia to the Richmond metro area.
Just before 8 a.m., some 195,000 homes and businesses were without electricity in Virginia, according to utility data aggregator poweroutage.us, after peaking at 202,000 about an hour before. Nearly 90% of Floyd County and 75% of Franklin County were without electricity. Power outages numbering in the several hundreds extended as far north as Craig, Botetourt and Amherst counties, with most localities to the south experiencing outages in the thousands.
Just over 120,000 of the outages are customers of Appalachian Power, which said in a release that it had over 6,000 personnel from states as far away as Texas and Louisiana assisting its employees and contractors in restoring power.
UPDATE 7:45PM, 2/13/2025: On Thursday evening, 125,000 Virginia utility customers remained without power. At one point on Thursday, every utility customer in Grayson County was without electricity, which also happened during the inland effects of Hurricane Helene in September. Appalachian Power, whose customers account for about 87,000 of those remaining without power, said on its website that the majority of its customers who lost power on Tuesday could expect to have it restored on Friday, while those who lost power early Thursday could expect it to be restored by Sunday.)
By comparison, the number of power outages in Virginia on Thursday morning was about two-thirds the number at the peak of the Hurricane Helene aftermath in late September and almost twice that of a somewhat similar winter storm in early January.
While road conditions improved on roadways in most of the area on Wednesday, trees and limbs falling across roadways have caused many to be blocked across the region. The severity of tree damage many residents reported across the region brought on some comparisons to a severe, widespread ice storm in February 1994.
The ice storm was brought on by multiple waves of low pressure in the upper atmosphere lifting warm, moist air over cold air at the surface trapped against the mountains, a setup commonly referred to as cold-air damming. The first round of precipitation on Tuesday began as snow, with 1 to 5 inch accumulations along and south of the U.S. 460 corridor connecting Blacksburg, Roanoke, Lynchburg and Richmond, and many 5-10 inch amounts to the north. Some locations along I-64 in western Virginia totaled 10-15 inches of snow in the opening round.
The widespread snow cover enhanced the ability of cold air to become trapped against the mountains, as temperatures stalled in the 30-34-degree range on Wednesday in much of the region. Locations that stayed 32 or below continued to build heavy ice, while those at 33 and 34 often were not warm enough to fully melt the ice away that had already occurred but collected lesser amounts. Many locations dropped back a degree or two to the freezing mark overnight after peaking slightly warmer on Wednesday.
Typical of cold-air damming setups, much of Southwest Virginia west of Interstate 77 saw milder air move in from the south, located west of the cold-air wedge, and avoided the majority of the severe ice.
While temperatures are expected to warm into the 40s and perhaps even some low 50s with the sun popping out on this Thursday afternoon, a cold front will be moving into the area as well, which will bring some gusty winds capable of breaking ice-encased tree limbs and delivering a renewal of cold air which will lead to a refreezing of what has thawed overnight into Friday morning.
The weekend promises widespread rain, mostly above the freezing mark, but there could be some patches of freezing rain in western Virginia early Saturday before it warms up.
Cold air is set to move into the region next week with perhaps the risk of another winter storm toward the middle to latter part of next week.
Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:
