KENNESAW, Ga. (AP) — As a deadly storm that brought crippling ice to the South and deep snow to the Northeast finally began to swirl out to sea Monday, it represented light at the end of the tunnel for some.
But thousands of Americans were still without power or heat, and temperatures were forecast to plunge well below freezing by early Tuesday in areas where the ice storm did its worst damage.
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Mandy Rosenthal pulls her son Wesley, 4, on a snowboard in a small park in New York, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
In this image provided by the City of Oxford, Miss., snow and ice cover trees and streets as a winter storm passes through, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026, in Oxford, Miss. (Josh McCoy/City of Oxford, Miss. via AP)
Residents dig out their cars in the South Boston neighborhood following a winter storm that dump more than a foot of snow across the region, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Power lines are seen during a winter storm Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
More than 800,000 power outages were reported nationwide Monday morning, with more than 150,000 of them in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, according to poweroutage.com. About 140,000 remained without power in hard-hit Mississippi, and 115,000 more in icy Louisiana.
After a sleepless night in Iuka, Mississippi, Adrian Ronca-Hohn said he awoke Monday to what looked "like a war zone.”
“We couldn’t go 10 seconds without hearing what sounded like a gunshot," the 23-year-old football coach said of falling trees and branches. “You’d hear a pop, a hard pop, and you’d hear the whistle of it falling, and then it would crash to the ground and just kind of explode.”
As temperatures across the South are expected to reach their coldest this week early Tuesday morning, people without power are trying to survive.
“We have a lot of people without heat, without power and without water," Ronca-Hohn said. We have a lot of mobile homes down here that aren’t very well-insulated."
Here's a look at the storm by the numbers.
One inch of ice (2.5 centimeters) recorded in multiple communities across Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Alabama, and South Carolina.
The temperature in Fahrenheit (minus 17 Celsius) that’s expected early Tuesday morning in Tennessee’s capital city, where thousands remain without power.
Inches of sleet (17 centimeters) that fell at Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to preliminary totals.
The number of days it could take to restore power in Allen County, Kentucky, city officials said. Other communities estimated similar time frames. In New Albany, Mississippi, the city utility warned Sunday that restoring power to all its customers “will take a minimum of a week and possibly more depending on conditions.”
Inches of snow (56.4 centimeters) that fell during the storm in Sterling, Massachusetts. The number is a preliminary figure through Monday morning.
The number of places in Nashville where people without power can go to warm up and charge their phones, including fire and police stations.
The temperature in Fahrenheit (50 Celsius) inside Marshall Ramsey’s home in Oxford, Mississippi, on Monday morning after he lost power. The weekend ice storm “was like a demonic symphony of trees breaking, transformers blowing and thunder,” said Ramsey, a longtime editorial cartoonist who now teaches at the University of Mississippi.
The number of dogs rescued from a rural property in the Tupelo, Mississippi, area just before the ice storm by Paws of War. The New York-based nonprofit rescues animals and places them with veterans and first responders.
The number of customers without power in Mississippi on Monday afternoon, according to poweroutage.com.
The number of Nashville Electric Service customers without power in the Nashville area on Monday afternoon, according to the company.
The number of customers without power in Tennessee on Monday afternoon, according to poweroutage.com.
Associated Press Writers Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Sophie Bates in Jackson, Mississippi, Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Kristin M. Hall in Nashville; Jake Offenhartz in New York and Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut.
Mandy Rosenthal pulls her son Wesley, 4, on a snowboard in a small park in New York, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
In this image provided by the City of Oxford, Miss., snow and ice cover trees and streets as a winter storm passes through, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026, in Oxford, Miss. (Josh McCoy/City of Oxford, Miss. via AP)
Residents dig out their cars in the South Boston neighborhood following a winter storm that dump more than a foot of snow across the region, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Power lines are seen during a winter storm Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Trump administration officials swiftly sought to portray 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, as an armed disruptor intent on doing harm to federal agents when he brought his own gun to a Minneapolis street where officers clashed with protesters over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Video shot by bystanders and reviewed by The Associated Press appears to contradict some of those statements.
Trump himself weighed in on social media after the shooting, sharing images of the gun that immigration officials said was recovered from Pretti and asking: “What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers?”
However, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stressed during a briefing Monday that she had “not heard the president characterize” Pretti as a domestic terrorist, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had suggested a day earlier, or use such words as assassin, as deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller did.
In their own words, this is what the Trump administration has said about Pretti and the circumstances around his death, and what is shown on videos of the shooting:
Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander leading Trump’s crackdown, told reporters Saturday that federal officers fired defensive shots after an individual “approached” with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun.
Also Saturday, Noem said several times that Pretti “came with a weapon and dozens of rounds of ammunition and attacked” officers, who took action to “defend their lives.”
WHAT WE KNOW: While questions remained about the confrontation, use-of-force experts told the AP that bystander video undermined federal authorities’ claim that Pretti approached with a firearm and that the officer opened fire defensively.
Pretti can be seen with only a phone in his hand. No footage has been made public that appears to show him brandishing a weapon in the moments before or during the confrontation.
Pretti is seen held down by officers for several seconds when someone is heard saying, “gun, gun.” An officer appears to pull a handgun from Pretti’s waist area and begins moving away.
Then the first shot is fired by a Border Patrol officer. There’s a slight pause, and then the same officer fires several more times into Pretti’s back. Multiple officers back off. Within seconds, Pretti is motionless on the street.
Pretti was licensed to carry a concealed weapon.
Also Saturday, Bovino said that Pretti “violently resisted” when agents tried to disarm him.
Noem said Sunday on Fox News Channel that officers tried to get Pretti to disengage, but Pretti “became aggressive and resisted them throughout that process.”
WHAT WE KNOW: The videos show Pretti stepping in after an immigration officer shoves a woman. Pretti appears to be holding his phone, but there’s no sign he’s holding a weapon.
Pretti moves between the two and reaches his hands out toward the officer. The officer deploys pepper spray. Pretti is seen turning his face away and raising an empty hand. The officer grabs Pretti’s hand to bring it behind his back and deploys the pepper spray again, pushing him away.
Pretti is next to the other protester when the officer grabs hold of Pretti and they struggle. The officer is then joined by several others and they force Pretti to the ground. An officer holding a canister strikes him several times.
The shooting Saturday occurred when officers were on a commercial street pursuing a man in the country illegally and wanted for domestic assault, Bovino said.
He said that Pretti was there “to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” In a Department of Homeland Security statement, spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin used the same words.
Noem emphasized Saturday that Pretti “wasn’t there to peacefully protest. He was there to perpetuate violence.” She said Sunday that Pretti “impeded a law enforcement operation, which is against federal law.”
WHAT WE KNOW: Pretti was one of many protesters on the street Saturday morning. In a seven-minute video obtained by the AP that shows the moments leading up to Pretti’s killing, he and others are holding up phones, apparently recording officer activity. Protesters are yelling out at the officers. Pretti is not visible the whole time, but he at one point can be seen talking to an officer, who pushes him back to the sidewalk. It’s not clear what Pretti is saying.
On Sunday, the Republican president in two lengthy social media posts said that Democrats had encouraged people to obstruct law enforcement operations, and called on officials in Minnesota to work with immigration officers and “turn over” people who were in the U.S. illegally.
“Tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media network.
Trump also said in a post Saturday that there had been a coordinated “cover up” to distract from billions being stolen from the state in a series of fraud cases involving government programs in which most of the defendants have roots in the east African country of Somalia. Trump accused Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey of “inciting Insurrection.”
Trump officials say Walz and Frey both repeatedly use inflammatory language, including Walz last year referring to federal immigration officers as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.”
WHAT WE KNOW: Minnesota, Minneapolis and St. Paul are all subjects of a September lawsuit by the Trump administration over their so-called sanctuary policies that the agency says interfere with the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration policies.
Minneapolis and St. Paul restrict the extent to which their law officers and other employees can cooperate with immigration enforcement, the lawsuit noted.
Walz last year rejected the assertion that Minnesota is a sanctuary state, with no statewide law protecting immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally from deportation. He has sharply criticized the administration’s operation in Minnesota as a “campaign of organized brutality,” which he repeated Saturday. Walz also has encouraged people to protest “loudly, urgent, but also peacefully,” he said in remarks after Renee Good’s killing by an immigration officer.
After Good’s killing, Frey used profanity in telling ICE to get out of Minneapolis.
“We do not want you here,” he said.
After the deadly shooting Saturday, both Walz and Frey pointed to the thousands of Minnesotans who peacefully protested the day prior.
“We want calm and peace and normalcy back to our lives. They want chaos,” Walz said. “We cannot and we will not give them what they want by meeting violence with violence.”
Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino walks with Federal agents outside a convenience store on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino stands during a news conference Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
People gather near the scene where Alex Pretti was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol officer yesterday, in Minneapolis, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
