We’re still digging out from Winter Storm Hernando, and the wreckage from Fern and Gianna hasn’t even been fully cleaned up yet. Three named storms in five weeks have canceled over 30,000 flights, choked off major freight corridors, and stacked disruptions so fast that nobody had time to recover before the next one hit.
Not to mention, combined losses are already in the hundreds of billions, and spring’s weeks away.
For those of you managing time-critical freight through all of this, especially with aircraft components, the picture is painfully clear. Capacity disappears the moment weather conditions deteriorate. Especially when three historic storms pile up back-to-back.
That’s the wall winter 2026 keeps slamming people into.
The reactive mindset of picking up the phone and hoping for the best after a disruption strikes simply can’t keep up anymore. What you need is a plan that already exists before the weather turns. A true “easy button” you can press when minutes matter, with capacity committed and execution ready to go.
Here’s why this winter is making that case impossible to ignore.
Calling winter 2026 rough is an understatement. It’s been record-setting in the worst possible ways.
Fern killed 171 people and became the deadliest winter storm since Uri in 2021. Ice accumulations hit a full inch across parts of Mississippi, Nashville lost power at levels never seen before, and the total economic impact landed between $105 billion and $115 billion.
Twenty-four governors declared emergencies simultaneously.
Gianna followed as a bomb cyclone that deepened to 965 millibars, the strongest storm of the entire season by central pressure. Charlotte tied a snowfall record from 1880. The Outer Banks got hit with a blizzard, something that almost never happens.
Hernando then dropped 38 inches on Providence, shattering an all-time record set during the legendary blizzard of 1978 by 10 inches. Wind gusts hit 98 mph on Cape Cod. The Boston Globe stopped its presses for the first time in 153 years.
You get the picture. When time-critical freight depends on functioning airports, open highways, and available capacity, storms at this scale don’t leave much to work with.
The three storms collectively grounded over 30,000 flights, the worst aviation disruptions since COVID-19. And for anyone moving time-critical freight through the nation’s airports, every single cancellation shrinks the pool of available capacity.
American Airlines called Fern “the largest weather-related disruption in its 100-year history” and canceled over 10,500 flights on its own. DFW, the airline’s biggest hub, dropped to 18 arrivals per hour against a normal capacity of 80-plus. Charlotte shut down entirely for 24 hours. Recovery took American five to seven days while competitors were back to normal in two.
Gianna then wiped out another 3,700 flights, and Hernando grounded 10,000 more. LaGuardia hit a 90% cancellation rate. Even South Florida airports with clear skies lost half their flights because planes and crews couldn’t get there.
The airports shut down. So you look to the roads. Except those were wrecked too.
Fern froze over nearly every interstate into Dallas and shut down I-65 in Nashville. Outbound freight from the Texas Gulf Coast dropped 69% in a single week. Standard carrier networks buckled, with rejection rates spiking harder than anything the 2024 hurricane season produced.
Hernando then took out the Northeast. New York City and New Jersey both imposed full travel bans. Commercial trucks were barred from the Thruway, and I-95 was shut down from Maryland to Massachusetts. The Port of New York and New Jersey, which handles a third of all East Coast container volume, shuttered every gate.
Every conventional option for moving time-critical freight disappeared at the same time. The normal carriers couldn’t get there. The normal routes didn’t work. And if your AOG recovery plan depends on standard capacity through standard channels, winter 2026 left you with nowhere to turn.
Any one of these storms would have been manageable on its own. The problem is that none of them happened in isolation.
Gianna hit while 150,000 customers in the Southeast still had no power from Fern. Salt supplies were already depleted. Business operations across multiple southeastern states stayed frozen for nearly 10 straight days. FreightWaves projected the market wouldn’t fully recover until March. Then Hernando buried the Northeast three weeks later.
Freight networks had no cushion to absorb any of it. Roughly 5,500 trucking operators had already exited the market during the 2023-2025 freight recession, and the capacity that remained was stretched thin. Not to mention the driver shortage.
Each storm compounded the damage from the last, and the recovery clock kept resetting to zero.
Winter 2026 has been brutal. But the hard truth is that the disruption cycle doesn’t end when the snow melts.
Winter storms have proven worse for U.S. freight than hurricanes three years running, and the reason is simple: hurricanes tend to hit outside major freight hubs, while winter storms blanket entire regions that include Dallas, Chicago, and the Northeast corridor all at once.
Fern alone stretched 2,000 miles. No tropical system comes close to that kind of coverage.
That said, summer brings its own problems. Heat waves warp rail tracks. Drought drops river levels and halts barge traffic. Wildfires close highways. Hurricanes shut ports.
Extreme weather events now strike every three weeks, compared to every four months just 40 years ago, and Everstream Analytics ranked it the No. 2 global supply chain risk for 2026 at a 93% threat level.
Three storms. Five weeks. Over 30,000 grounded flights, frozen highways from Dallas to Boston, and a freight network that ran out of answers. If winter 2026 proved anything, it’s that waiting until after disruption strikes to figure out your next move is a losing strategy.
Carrier 911 built the alternative. Our nationwide network of TSA-cleared drivers and dedicated expedited trucks stays on standby 24/7, positioned to move the moment conditions deteriorate. We quote in 15 minutes, dispatch immediately, and track every shipment in real time so your stakeholders always know where the part is. From first call to final-mile delivery, Carrier 911 handles the entire chain of custody so your team can focus on getting that aircraft back in service.
AOG recovery demands speed, certainty, and execution. Carrier 911 delivers all three, storm or no storm.
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