The winter storm that hit the eastern US over the weekend was caused by climate change.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and that’s why last weekend’s winter storm brought more snow, sleet and freezing rain than similar weather systems in the past.
People dig out their cars parked along Lancaster Street during a winter storm in Albany, New York on January 26, 2026.
Lori Van Buren/Albany Times Union via Getty Images
If you live in the eastern US, you’re probably among the millions of people dealing with the effects of heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain over the weekend. And while it may be extremely cold, new research shows that last weekend’s weather was actually Supercharged by global warming.
More than two feet of snow fell in some of the hardest-hit locations, while freezing rain left up to an inch of snow, causing road closures and power outages across the Southeast. There is no doubt that this storm was very big. It was always going to be a shocker – but it dropped more freezing rain than any storm that had hit decades earlier. It may seem contradictory that a warmer climate should mean heavier snowfall, but warmer, though still below zero, temperatures are a recipe for more snow.
This is because for every one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, the atmosphere can hold about 7 percent more moisture. And the storm came in an atmosphere that has warmed by up to five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit) compared to previous decades, according to research organization Climameter, which prepared the new analysis. This means that this storm received up to 20 percent more rainfall than it would have if human-caused warming had not occurred.
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As the planet’s temperatures rise, some areas of the U.S. could see more snowfall for a while — especially in places where lake-effect snow is likely, since it takes longer for bodies of water to freeze in the winter.
The impact of climate change on snow storms means that “infrastructure and emergency planning standards, historically based on past snowfall records, may no longer be adequate,” analysis co-author Haosu Tang of the University of Sheffield in England said in a statement.
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