A January 26, 2026, Communications Status Report issued by the Federal Communications Commission provides a nationwide snapshot of how communications networks performed as Winter Storm Fern moved across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. The report is based on carrier submissions through the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS), which the FCC activated and expanded as freezing rain and ice spread into additional counties.
According to the DIRS data, less than 1.7% of cell sites within the reporting footprint were out of service at the 10:00 a.m. EST snapshot on January 26. Where outages occurred, they were attributed primarily to commercial power failures, transport/backhaul disruptions, or sites operating on backup power, rather than to physical damage to towers. The FCC also reported that no Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) were listed as out of service during the reporting period.
Only two cell sites were out due to damage in Laurel, KY.
There have been no news reports of any tower failures that were caused by the winter storm.
While the FCC report does not explicitly certify structural integrity, it is notable that there is no mention of tower collapses or structural failures, and the DIRS tables contain no indicators of tower failure across the affected counties. In counties such as Cherokee County, Alabama, the report shows no cell sites out of service at the time of reporting.
Where the ice was heaviest (≈1 inch or more)
National Weather Service reports indicated top-tier glaze ice accretion in:
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Alabama (northwest), including Cherokee County
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Mississippi (north)
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Louisiana (north)
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Oklahoma (southeast)
Additional areas experienced 0.75–0.80 inches—still structurally significant—across parts of Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Louisiana.
Why the Cherokee County towers still stood with heavy ice
Ice loading (View Design Loads by County) is a primary collapse risk for communications towers because glaze ice increases member diameter and drag, dramatically amplifying wind forces. Under ANSI/TIA-222-G, however, introduced in 2005 when many of the nation’s towers were being designed, ice thickness and “wind-on-ice” are inseparable—the standard assumes a paired load case in which wind is part of the mechanism that drives ice accretion.
In Cherokee County, Alabama, reported ice approached 1.0 inch, nominally above the ~0.75-inch glaze thickness commonly cited in the standard’s ice map. But exceeding ice thickness alone does not dictate failure. If local 3-second gusts during peak accretion remained at or below the wind-on-ice speed embedded in the TIA model (often cited near ~30 mph for that ice case), the combined structural demand may have remained within design capacity. Without that concurrent gust loading, even heavy ice does not automatically translate into collapse.
Bottom line
Winter Storm Fern tested network resilience more than structural limits. The FCC’s January 26 DIRS snapshot shows limited, localized outages, no reported PSAP disruptions, and no documentation of tower collapses, even in regions that experienced near-record ice accumulation. The data suggests that modern tower design standards and the coupled wind-on-ice approach played a central role in keeping towers standing during one of the season’s most severe icing events.
