April Michigan Ice Storm Killed/Damaged 3 Million Acres Of Forest; Warming Makes Ice Storms More Likely, Powerful

Winter has been slow to release its icy grip from the upper midwest this year, and in northern Michigan, its effects will be keenly felt for months, perhaps years. A devastating ice storm that hit late last month has left an estimated 3m acres of trees snapped in half or damaged from the weight of up to an inch-and-a-half of ice across the northern part of lower Michigan.

According to the Michigan department of natural resources, 3,000 state roads were affected, with 12 counties declared disaster areas. Across the border in Ontario, around 350,000 electricity customers lost power where freezing rain fell for up to 30 continuous hours. In Mackinaw City, a small resort town on the shores of Lake Huron, utility trucks filled hotel parking lots a full two weeks after the storm. The 7.30am ferry to Mackinac Island saw dozens of utility workers on board, who upon arrival, took off to various parts of the island to cut up downed trees and clear vegetation. “This was one of the oldest trees on the island,” says Dustin Cobb, who drives a horse dray that delivers goods around the island, pointing to the mangled remains of a lilac tree in a yard on Mackinac Island’s Cadotte Avenue. “It’s sad to see it gone.”

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Climate experts say that the warming atmosphere resultant from climate change can retain more moisture, which could fuel severe freezing rain and ice storms under the correct conditions. “A lot of areas where you tend to have ice storms are regions where you have terrain features that help to either trap cold air near the ground, or channel the cold air, for example, in a valley,” says Christopher McCray, a climate simulation specialist at the Consortium on Regional Climatology and Adaptation to Climate Change (Ouranos) in Montreal. “In Montreal, the St Lawrence River valley is one of the main freezing rain areas in North America and the world because of the valley, which is orientated from the southwest to the north-east.”

Other areas that are susceptible to freezing rain and ice storms include the region around Portland, Oregon, and the south-eastern US, including the Carolinas, Virginia and parts of Appalachia. “The mountain range there modifies the wind flow, so you get cold air that’s being funneled southward at the surface.” McCray says it’s difficult to identify trends that match climate change with greater incidents of significant freezing rain events because currently there is a dearth of observations. “We have weather stations that record freezing rain occurrence, but amounts are harder to come by,” he says.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/29/michigan-ice-storm-natural-disaster

“From what I’ve seen there doesn’t seem to be a clear trend over the last few decades, but we have looked at future projections.”

Those projections suggest that the regions that experience freezing rain today will see that potentially happen less often in the future, but areas further north could see more ice storms.